Use of violence in two of Flannery O'Connor's stories

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Meaning of Violence in Two of

 Flannery O'connor's Stories

        Generally, violence can be looked upon as something that is evil because we believe that no good can come out of it. When we think of violence, usually we tend to associate it with the use of physical, mental, or verbal force to damage the well being of an indvidual. Flannery O'Connor, the author of Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard To find uses violence as a means to redeem oneself. These stories usually depict the evil side of the human nature. Her style is strongly cruel to both the reader and the character yet eloquently done, which effectively drives the point home to the reader. Moreover, the use of violence in O'Connor's works, generally at the highest point in her stories raises the need for revelation and redemption.

        In the short story A Good Man is Hard to Find, writer O'Connor uses violence as a tool of both good and evil. The story is about six members of a family, and while on their way to Florida, are murdered by an escaped criminal who is called "the Misfit," (A Good Man is Hard to Find). The story revolves around the grandmother. So, while reading the story, we notice the action of evil, which leads to the obvious death of the family that results from violence. The deaths of the family that were a result of violence, which provoked feelings of sympathy, sorrow, and fear showed us the negative characeristic of violence in the story.The change of the grandmother's attitude also shows us that violence can be used as a positive tool to oneself.The grandmother is very selfishly hypocritical and a change in her attitude shows up at the end of the story. She also seems to be very arrogant when viewing others for not being just like her. This is shown when they pass a black boy on the road and says "Oh look at the cute pickaninny!" (A Good Man is Hard to Find). In this part of the story, we notice that the grandmother veiws others who are not like her as lesser human beings.

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                The way the grandmother is selfish and hypocritical is every now and then shown to us. In the story, the grandmother tries very hard to get the family to go to Tennessee instead of Florida because she knows people there of whom to visit. Interestingly, she uses the newspaper to change her family's minds of going to Tennessee, in which she says, "I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it," (A Good Man is Hard to Find) while showing them the page about the murderer. Here, we can see violence as something ...

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