Shadye Millican
English 1302
7 October 2015
Dr. Jana Wesson-Martin
O’Connor’s Amazing Religious Connection
Flannery O’Connor, also known as, a southern gothic styled writer, reveals the secrets of God’s love through short stories. In her stories she expresses her beliefs, knowing that not everyone that read her stories had the same beliefs as her. “[O’Connor] presents man in his relationships to God, to himself, and to other men, and she reveals that all of these relationships are indivisible aspects of his being. Thus, even as she shows the many ways in which man tries to destroy his essential, whole self, she also shows that those attempts can never entirely succeed; the very interrelationships of his motives indicate that the whole self cannot be completely destroyed and that man remains free enough to be healed” (Eggenschwiler 60). In the short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” O’Connor utilizes two grotesque characters; the grandmother, a very judgmental woman, who is rudely awakened by death being right around the corner, and the Misfit, a serial killer, who murders the grandmothers whole family first and then kills her, to depict spirituality and salvation.However the grandmother played a very significant role, so did the misfit and the only way to completely understand the spirituality of
the story, people must analyze both characters. Although what needs to be discussed is how O’Connor reveals what a good man really is through both grotesque characters.
“O’Connor represents in her characters, and produces in her readers, a revulsion that we cannot help but polarize the forces of good and evil in our own minds” (Paulson 85). In the story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a family is getting ready to go on vacation, but the grandmother is at a disagreement with the family and most importantly Bailey, her son. The grandmother does not want to go to Florida due to her hearing of a serial killer being on the loose, so instead she try to...