Essay on A Good Man is hard to Find

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A Good Man Is Hard to Find In A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor, we experienced the many different characteristics that make Granny unique. As we read the short story, we learn that the distinctive characteristics Granny possesses create conflict prior to the road trip, during the road trip, and when they face confrontation in the end. What characteristics in her personality set Granny so outlandish that it causes tension throughout the story? Hitting on the surface level of Granny, we can imply that she tends to manipulate people to get her own way. In the beginning of the short story, we understand that the way Granny doesn’t want to go to Florida in the first place, instead she would rather go visit family in Tennessee. When talking to her son, Bailey, she never clearly tells him she doesn’t want to go to Florida; she tries to manipulate him into changing his mind by showing him a newspaper article about a “Misfit” on his way to Florida and subtly saying “Just you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer my conscience if I did it.” (353) After her first attempt of changing Baileys mind doesn’t work, she tells him that the children have already been to Florida. She is trying to influence Bailey to change his mind but to make it seem like it’s for the children, not for her own good. We experience again how Granny’s manipulation works when she pleads to stop at an old plantation knowing Bailey won’t make the stop. To get her way she tells the kids that there was a “secret panel in the house…and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found…” (357) knowing that it would catch interest in the children, and knowing there was no hidden, secret panel. Her plan to manipulate the children to satisfy her needs worked in her favor to go visit the old plantation. We also know that Granny thinks she is superior to others and shows pride in being a lady from how Flannery O’Connor describes her outfit. When they go on the road trip, Granny is dressed in “ a navy blue sailor hat with a bunch of white collars on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot on the print” (354) compared to Baileys wife who was simply wearing “slacks and had her hair tied up in a green handkerchief” (354). O’Connor explains that Granny is dressed like a lady because “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (354). We also know that manners and respect for elders is
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