Symbolism In A Good Man No Problem

Words: 1713
Pages: 7

Joseph Stalin once said, “Death is the solution to all problems.” And to some extent he was absolutely correct, “No man, No problem” as his quote continues. People are born, live life, develop a character, relationships, feelings, and make a life for themselves in whatever way they can, still, in the end it ends the same way. Some people choose the selfish path and focus their life around themselves while few choose a life devoted to encouraging others, however there is one thing in common. Everyone will have sorrows, troubles and will meet troubled people, and at some point go through bad periods in their lives, but at the end it is their choice of how they live their life, and how they end their story. Both O’Conner and Leslie show this very …show more content…
There is a lot of symbolism in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” however the most significant one is the grandmothers hat. Throughout the whole story the grandmother refers to herself as a lady, and it seems as if in all this she has something like a moral standard or rather a moral code which she has to follow in order to be a lady. The grandmother considers her pride of her home state, the “goodness” of her heart, her conscience which would not forgive her if she took the children to Florida because that is the direction that the Misfit is traveling and many other things that she really does not have, as the bases for her “Moral Code”. The grandmother is actually hypocritical, a liar, selfish and self-centered etc. The hat symbolizes her moral code, when she puts it on to go on the trip we can see that she strongly believes in this code, through the conversations and stories that she tells. However, when the car accident happens, and the Misfit comes along, her hat breaks just like her moral code and everything that being a lady once meant to her. At this point in the story the selfishness, self-centeredness, hypocrisy and many more negative characteristics are all clearly visible. The grandmother begs solely for her own life while the Misfit murders her children and grandchildren, she calls herself a lady even …show more content…
O’Conner does not necessarily take the story back to a completely different time and interrupt the whole narrative in order to give some background information to the reader; she manages to tie it in with the story. As the story goes, the grandmother tells little stories from her past and these are the flashbacks. In these little stories she remembers, the better days which are the days of her youth and the things that happened there, which gives the reader an insight to what her life was like and where she came from. These little flashbacks help the reader understand why she wants to be a lady so much; however, it does not explain why she is the complete opposite of one. In the “Drop” the flashback is used in order to give the reader background information on the characters and help them understand how the characters reached this point in their life. In this story the flashbacks are portrayed through the character remembering the house that they lost and then going on to remember why they lost it, which was because they bought it at the peak, and then ended up in debt. “A committee is exactly what I needed back in 2008—some team of experts to save me (and us) from myself. Instead, we bought at the peak and suffered like chumps.” (The Adirondack Review) In the “Drop” the flashback is much more useful to the reader than in “A