Deconstructing O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find".

Authors Avatar

Deconstructing O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”

It is for centuries past that the theme of death and salvation was encapsulated majestically in western literature. Also, it is for centuries that modern writers have refrained from the intervention of such topic into their pieces of work, condemning its solemn repetition and its obsoleteness. However, in the 20th century American literature, Flannery O’Connor has revived the thematic significance of Christian salvation in which death occasionally gets involved. A devout Christian she is, O’Connor combines her profound religious knowledge with her Southern milieu, contemporary violence, and satiric sense of humour, which has emerged mostly in form of the short story, her most celebrated genre.

Published and re-published since 1955 is O’Connor’s first collection of short stories, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, throughout which her Christian beliefs have been meticulously patterned. Apart from other short stories that deal with the downfall of pride is “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” whose major concern has been directed toward death and salvation and has been embodied with other minor concerns, such as adults’ influences upon children and changing values in American society. This short story contains many jaunty features that help depict Flannery O’Connor’s theme of death and salvation. O’Connor’s unique choice of narration allows the reader to interpret the thematic messages at different dimensions, to display the evils of adults’ world as well as to capture more clearly the psychological complexity in the protagonist’s mind.

Using the intrusive third-person limited omniscient narrative, O’Connor introduces her heroine of the short stories along with her characteristics and her familial relationships. To begin with, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is viewed through the eyes of a talkative grandmother who, ignored by the rest of the family, relies on the “texts” to structure her reality. With no desire to go to Florida as well as the burning desire to visit east Tennessee, the grandmother in disguise of a good-hearted person refers to the newspaper article about the escaping Misfit and exclaims to her son Bailey, “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it”. It should also be noted that the article itself is a written text and, even though it refers to events outside and prior to the primary récit, it stands as an unrecognized prophecy of the later event. At this stage, indeed, the Misfit does not represent a real threat to the grandmother but is just a ploy to get her own way. The grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is typified as talkative and manipulating. O’Connor’s highlighted portrayal of the grandmother is, in some way, associated with the image of an old, deceitful ‘witch’ with her hidden cat, Pitty Sing, and ‘her big black valise that [looks] like the head of a hippopotamus’. The head of a hippopotamus is an African sacrificial offering that is believed to placate the haunting spirits.

Join now!

The reader is also acknowledged at the beginning of the story that the heroine is about to take a journey that she is apparently unwilling to. The grandmother is on the way to Florida with her family. On the way to death and salvation, O’Connor equips her stories with many picaresque elements in order to reflect the protagonist’s background as well as to illustrate the protagonist’s limited secular and religious knowledge. The grandmother’s behaviors in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” reemphasizes the fact that she is deceptive, a characteristic that will harm not only her family but ...

This is a preview of the whole essay