Hard To Find Symbolism

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The Good, The Bad, and The Naive
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, written by Flannery O’Connor is a very intricate piece of writing. This story uses symbolism, irony, and it compares and contrasts good and evil by using visual descriptions of the scenery. O’Connor uses symbolisms such as the cloudless sky, dirt road, the woods, and the death of the grandmother. “The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled.” (O’Connor 135). This imagery of the woods overshadows the evilness that prevails onto the family at the end of the story.
There are many symbols in the story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, but the symbol that was used the majority of the time was the sky. The sky symbolized two main variations throughout the story. The first variation is the clouded sky, which represents her blindness to reality and prevents her from seeing the truth. She is naïve and thinks of herself as a holier-than-thou woman when she really finds out that she is a sinner just like the Misfit. The grandmother does not realize that she is a sinner throughout the story until she is about to die and says, …show more content…
The family traveled on the wrong path so they could reach redemption and find God’s grace in it and perhaps alter the Misfits way in thinking. At the very end of the story it states that “The Misfit’s eyes were red-rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking”, which shows that he was changing. After the grandmother was killed, the Misfits accomplice Bobby Lee says “Some fun!” (O’Connor 146). The Misfit then shoots back, “Shut up, Bobby Lee, it’s no real pleasure in life.” (O’Connor 146). It’s obvious that, at least for the moment, the grandmother has affected the misfit enough to change his point of view. The story portrays the family with twisted morals, and values and uses natural symbols and images throughout to help describe the good, the evil, and the
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