Flannery O’Connor displays her viewers a realistic take a look at their own mortality in “A Good Man is Hard to Find. ” The story is about a household of five, a father, mom, grandmother, and two children, beginning a vacation to California from Georgia. The family, on their approach to a routine vacation, uses a detour which will change their very own lives permanently. Through the use of fictional elements like symbolism and characterization, O’Connor creates a theme of good or
evil, which can be felt through the entire story by tapping into the audience’s emotions. How does one particular characterize good and nasty?
Throughout period, people have asked this query and only received opinions based on references by religious functions, such as The Holy Bible. “A good man out of the good treasure in the heart bringeth forth good stuff: and an evil gentleman out of the nasty treasure bringeth forth wicked things” (Matthew 12: 34). In other words, a good man does good things, and an nasty man will evil things.
Applying characterization, O’Connor personifies the grandmother of the same quality and The Misfit as nasty. Although there happen to be grey areas, readers can easily discern which character is which.
The grandmother can be characterized like a good person and a lady that does the right thing according to the requirements of her time. Your woman seems to handle goodness mainly as a function of being respectable, having very good manners, and coming from a category of “good blood” (O’Connor 454). Before going out of for holiday, the grandma donned her finest clothes, so she’d look like a woman, or, in her eyes, a good person (O’Connor 446). The grandmother’s portrayal of good makes her flawed, much like every other man, which draws in the reader by making the character relatable.
Everyone has their own flaws. The Misfit is utilized as a foil character towards the grandmother, helping disclose “by contrast [her] distinctive qualifications” (“Character” 127). By characterizing The Misfit as a murdering convict in search of pleasure through others pain, O’Connor’s reaches her market by instilling fear in them. The actions of the doj happening in the story really can happen, which allows open minded readers to place themselves in the story line and feel what O’Connor makes the characters feel.
A great example of creating fear and sympathy in the market is when O’Connor creates, “There were two even more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head just like a parched outdated turkey hen crying for water and called, ‘Bailey Boy, Cromwell Boy! ‘ as if her heart might break” (O’Connor 454). Through this line, viewers feel hearts almost burglary sympathy pertaining to the granny as if they have lost their particular son, but soon dread creeps up because everyone has been killed except the grandmother, going out of her exclusively with bad.
Through characterization, O’Connor creates an psychological and relatable connection between the story plus the readers, which is a great component that defines good copy writers from wonderful writers. Studying is just a method for people to get away the everyday redundancies of life, regardless if it is hit with fear and sympathy. In “A Great Man is not easy to Find, ” symbolism is utilized to foreshadow the activities and represent the actual character of The Misfit. Symbolism is definitely using “a person, subject, or event that advises more than the literal meaning” (“Symbolism” 270).
O’Connor uses objects which are not menacing in everyday employ and describes them in such image detail that this intensifies the terror to come in the story (Kahane). After the family experienced wrecked, an auto comes into perspective, passes simply by them, comes back around shifting slower than previously, and prevents (O’Connor 450). The car is described as “a big dark battered hearse-like automobile, ” and the drivers is illustrated as “an older man” with graying hair around a “long creased face” wearing “blue denims that were too tight for him” with no shirt (O’Connor 450).
The description of the car and driver shows darkness and invokes dread. The driver, referred to as Misfit, would not like kids or Christ, and disagrees with the grandma when the lady calls him a “good man” (O’Connor 451-54). “The Grandmother’s encounter with the Misfit tests her religious philosophy, and in therefore doing, originates the puzzle of good and evil” (Desmond). O’Connor’s usage of characterization and symbolism clears her history world up to her visitors, stirring up their own feelings, and not only letting them see theme of good or evil, nevertheless feel the big difference between them, as well.
No man is perfect, nevertheless most very good people have good morals and a mind while evil people have not any guilt or perhaps conscience; similar to the grandmother and The Misfit. As opposed to what the granny thinks, following your rules or wicked is certainly not determined by how one is brought up or the type of friends and family one comes from, but by choices and actions that one makes. Having the capacity to relate to her characters and feel the actual feel is how O’Connor draws in her audience and creates a tragically wonderful story that is a comprehensive guide for everyone. Performs Cited “Character. ” The Bedford Summary of Literature. Male impotence.
Michael She. 8th male impotence. Boston: Bedford, 2008. 123-43. Print Desmond, John. “Flannery O’Connor’s misfit and the mystery of evil. ” Renascence: Essays in Values in Literature 56. 2 (2004). Literature Resource Center. Net. 5 November. 2012. ” Flannery O’Connor, Bloom’s Major Brief Story Authors (1985): 123-24. Blooms Fictional Reference Online. Facts Upon File. Net. 5 Nov 2012. you