StudentShare
Contact Us
Sign In / Sign Up for FREE
Search
Go to advanced search...
Free

Setting And Characters Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find - Essay Example

Cite this document
Summary
The paper "Setting And Characters Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find" discusses Flannery O’Connor’s novel which is a short story about a grandmother and her family who decide to go on vacation to Florida. It also focuses on the fear in the story that does not make itself apparent until towards the end…
Download free paper File format: .doc, available for editing
GRAB THE BEST PAPER95.2% of users find it useful
Setting And Characters Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find
Read Text Preview

Extract of sample "Setting And Characters Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find"

Setting And Characters Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find Story Overviews Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a short story about a grandmother and her family who decide to go on vacation to Florida. The grandmother is against going to Florida, wanting to spend her time in Tennessee. In an attempt to convince her son to change his mind, she tells him that an escaped convict is making his way to Florida. As they make their way to Florida regardless, the grandmother mentions an old house that she wants to visit. After realizing that the house is in a different state, she causes her son to get into an accident. The escaped convict that the grandmother had used as an excuse to avoid Florida is the first to arrive at the scene. After trying to talk him down, the convict kills the grandmother and her family. William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” opens with the death of Emily Grierson, but then divulges into the life she lived prior to her death. After the death of her father, Emily lived a very sheltered life. She seldom left her home, and she eventually became a topic of great curiosity. When Homer, a contract worker with a construction company, arrives in town, he and Emily spend a lot of time together. It is assumed that they get married, and Homer moves in to Emily’s home. However, after many years and very few glimpses of Emily or Homer, it becomes apparent that Emily has died. When they inspect the house, the people come to realize that Homer had also been dead, but his death had taken place much sooner than Emily’s. Character The grandmother in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was a very conceited, self-centered woman whose actions proved to get the best of everyone. Even though her family wants to go to Florida, the grandmother is more concerned with where she wants to go. She even lies about the convict heading to Florida to make her son change his mind. When they are on the way to Florida, the grandmother decides to visit an old house from her past, though it is too late when she realizes that the house was in another state. Her self-centered attitude caused her family to wind up in the predicament that they did. Finally, when the convict, The Misfit, is baring down on the grandmother, though she is upset at the state of her family, as many of them have died at this point, the grandmother’s sole concern is for herself. She wants to make sure that she gets out of the situation alive. Similarly, Emily in “A Rose for Emily” was also more preoccupied with herself over others, and this caused someone, if not many people, to die. Her concerns and her needs would be met no matter what she had to do. Not wanting to be alone or give up the people that she was close to, Emily harbored her father’s dead body for a few days before she finally surrendered him for his funeral. Though he needed to be laid at rest, Emily was more concerned with how she felt about the situation. When she bought the arsenic, at first it was believed that she was going to kill herself, but after the townspeople found the dead body of Homer hidden in Emily’s home, it was assumed that she had poisoned him so that she would never have to be apart from him until she died. Again, she was acting on her own desires, not acknowledging Homer’s need to want to stay alive. Setting The settings between the two stories are vastly different. The grandmother from the first story is clearly from a very closed, dangerous world (Coles 89). As such, the grandmother was able to validly use the accuse of the escaped convict. In most scenarios involving car accidents, the first person to the scene often helps the family in danger. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the person to arrive immediately after the car accident is a convict. Instead of helping them, he kills the entire family, including the children. It is a devastating, unfortunate world, and while the grandmother may have lied about the whereabouts of the convict to change vacation plans, she still knew the kind of world that her family was living in. She was aware of the dangers that it presented without warning. Emily’s world, on the other hand, is a stereotypical small town, one in which all the people are close, both physically and otherwise (Hinkle 64). Everybody knew the business and goings-on of everybody else, including the happenings with Emily, despite the fact that she hardly made appearances after her father’s death. It was a safe, closed off world, much as Emily had been closed off inside her house. It was such a small, close-knit town where strange and scary things were simply not meant to happen. Just as the grandmother in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” lived in a dark and dangerous world, Emily had the blessing of living in a place at the completely opposite end of the spectrum. The similarity between the two settings is that the people in each story did not expect what they discovered. The grandmother’s son, Bailey, heeded the grandmother’s warnings about the escaped convict because he did not believe that it would be possible to run into him. The world might have been a dangerous place, but he did not think that it was that bad. In the small town in “A Rose for Emily,” the townspeople, though acknowledging that something was not right about Emily, never would have thought that something as twisted as a case of necrophilia, which possibly involved a murder, was taking place within their small, safe, comfortable town. Tone The tone of both of the stories is that of fear, though this emotion does not make itself apparent in either story until towards the end. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the story turns to fear after the car accident. However, it exists in a smaller portion at the beginning of the story, when the grandmother first hears about the convict. It dies down, remaining beneath the surface, until Bailey crashes the car. In “A Rose for Emily,” the fear follows a similar pattern. Though the tone starts out as curiosity, it changes abruptly to fear the second it is realized that Emily bought arsenic. It remains there through to the end of the story when it is discovered that she is dead and that she more than likely killed Homer. Works Cited Coles, Robert. Flannery O’Connor’s South. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993. Print. Hinkle, James. Reading Faulkner. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994. Print. Read More
Cite this document
  • APA
  • MLA
  • CHICAGO
(“Setting And Characters Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find Essay”, n.d.)
Setting And Characters Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find Essay. Retrieved from https://studentshare.org/literature/1415168-compare-contrast-essay
(Setting And Characters Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find Essay)
Setting And Characters Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find Essay. https://studentshare.org/literature/1415168-compare-contrast-essay.
“Setting And Characters Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find Essay”, n.d. https://studentshare.org/literature/1415168-compare-contrast-essay.
  • Cited: 0 times

CHECK THESE SAMPLES OF Setting And Characters Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Literary Research Paper on A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

a good man is hard to find is a very inspiring story which teaches the readers more things than one, the story presents the Southern milieu very vividly.... a good man is hard to find is a very inspiring story which teaches the readers more things than one, the story presents the Southern milieu very vividly.... a good man is hard to find” is a short story with opening comic episodes that belie and foreshadow a tragic ending.... ?? (a good man is hard to find) Religion is of prime importance in the story, the character of the grandmother is arguably the most important, though she is not a true Christian she tries everything within her reach to save herself from the misfit, she literally begs the misfit for her life and asks him to pray but the misfit shoots her three times in the chest and kills her along with her other family members....
5 Pages (1250 words) Research Paper

Revelation & A good man is hard to find Flannery OConner

Two short stories; Revelation and a good man is hard to find, written by Flannery O'Conner share the common theme of transformation within individuals blessed by the grace of God due to violent actions (verbal and physical) or spectacular displays of cruelty.... Her writings are influenced by a coherent theme of relation of God to the human spirit transcending nature (Stafford) In the two short stories, commonality occurs in the main characters of “Revelation” and “a good man is hard to find”....
6 Pages (1500 words) Research Paper

Series Nip tuck

The main characters of the series are the two cosmetic surgeons whose business is to make their customers have a perfect exterior as they run a cosmetic surgery Clinic under the name Troy/McNamara, where Troy and MacNamara are the respective surnames of the two surgeons.... It can be easily said that in the present world, where beauty is depicted by waif thin models , whose perfect figure, perfect features and perfect walk symbolise the very idea of womanhood/manhood , an average person's entire idea of self esteem and personal worth is based on how good he looks ....
16 Pages (4000 words) Essay

Literature and Film

Stride on the one-hand, held bait the Greer's by letting them go into town as his messenger, only to find Mr.... The clincher is each find their means to get pass these conflicts without the necessary fate of failing or dying.... It is a matter of the good guys finishing on top while the bad guys die, perish, or made to pay debts.... Both characters unfold into a life- changing (or, in Sile's case life affirming) journey, to establish stability in their chosen fields....
5 Pages (1250 words) Coursework

Literature Analysis

The short stories Where are you going, Where have you been by Joyce Carol Oates and a good man is hard to find by Flannery O'Connor describe events and social life, values and human relations dominated in the middle of the XX century.... In Where are you going, Where have you been Connie escapes with a stranger while in a good man is hard to find the grandmother is killed by the criminal.... In both stories, the inevitable discrepancy between characters' expectations of respect and the disrespect they receive gives rise to their irritation and passionate anger, vented in irate language and occasional acts of physical chastising....
4 Pages (1000 words) Book Report/Review

A Good Man is Hard to Find

The essay "a good man is hard to find" focuses on a story "a good man is hard to find" by Flannery O' Connor.... hellip; “a good man is hard to find” by Flannery O' Connor is a story which has many literary devices which make it a masterpiece.... In the story, we can find allegory, symbolism, and imagery.... In the story, we can find allegory, symbolism, and imagery.... She always looks nice and dress respectably and has good manners....
5 Pages (1250 words) Essay

Elements of Literature Plot, Characters, Stylistic Devices

This essay explores elements of short stories and poetry with the special consideration of Anton's Chekhov's The Bet, O' Conner's a good man is hard to find and Wordsworth's The world is too much with us.... By creating the characters of Grand Mother and Misfit, O'Conner has enlightened the fact that different personalities are delicate in their own way.... This paper "Elements of Literature – Plot, characters, Stylistic Devices" focuses on the fact that Ezra Pound described literature as simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree....
8 Pages (2000 words) Essay

The Use of Character and Setting in Literature

The author of this book review "The Use of Character and Setting in Literature" describes the use of characters in “Who's Irish” and “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall” and setting in “The Location of the River” by Barry Lopez” and “Why I Live at the P.... hellip; In particular, the book creates a link between the students and the literary works of the authors to help them understand reading and writing skills such as the use of symbols, plot, setting, characters, point of view, theme, language, and style....
6 Pages (1500 words) Book Report/Review
sponsored ads
We use cookies to create the best experience for you. Keep on browsing if you are OK with that, or find out how to manage cookies.
Contact Us