Critical Analysis Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find By...

Flannery O Connor was often shocked to find how people interpreted her stories. Some readers of A Good Man is Hard to Find believed the grandmother was evil, even a witch. Soon O Connor set out, quite explicitly, in letters and lectures to detail the theology of the story and the importance of the grandmother as an agent of grace. In a letter to John Hawkes, she explained how violence and grace come together: More than in the Devil I am interested in the indication of Grace, the moment when you know that Grace has been offered and accepted— such as the moment when the Grandmother realizes the Misfit is one of her own children. These moments are prepared for (by me anyway) by the intensity of the evil circumstances. When O Connor†¦show more content†¦Generally O Connor chalked up all the misreadings and confusion to the spiritual shortcomings of the modern reader: Today s audience is one in which religious feeling has become, if not atrophied, at least vaporous and sentimental. But the discrepancies between how O Connor is often read and how she claimed she should be read cannot simply be explained by her theology of grace or by the lack of religious feeling among readers. Critical opinion over the years has tended to line up behind O Connor s own explanations; however, O Connor s analysis of A Good Man Is Hard to Find still seems baffling and occasionally a critic has questioned the theology of the fiction. Andre Bleikasten, focusing on O Connor s novels, claimed that the truth of O Connor s work is the truth of her art, not that of her church. Her fiction does refer to an implicit theology, but if we rely, as we should, on its testimony rather than on the author s comments, we shall have to admit that the Catholic orthodoxy of her work is at least debatable And Frederick Asals recalls D. H. Lawrence s advice that a reader should trust the tale and not the teller. Of A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Asals claims: BLOCK QUOTE One can easily pass over her [O Connor s] hope that the grandmother s final gesture to The MisfitShow MoreRelatedThe Moral Structure Of Flannery OConnors A Good Man Is Hard To Find1148 Words   |  5 PagesWorks Cited Bonney, William. The Moral Structure of Flannery OConnors a Good Man Is . Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 27, no. 3, Summer90, p. 347. EBSCOhost, pulaskitech.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=truedb=afhAN=9705041482site=ehost-livescope=site. The ten stories in Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find circumscribe a moral and thematic center (Bonney). William Booney’s article was written as if the grandmother is actually grasping the savingRead MoreLiterary Analysis â€Å"Setting† – a Good Man Is Hard to Find2158 Words   |  9 PagesProfessor Sharon Thiese The Short Story May 28th, 2012 Literary Analysis â€Å"Setting† – A Good Man is Hard to Find In the story â€Å"A Good Man is Hard to Find† by Flannery O’Connor starts out by giving a look at a dysfunctional family on a vacation, but ultimately, gives insight into ourselves as well as the nature of good and evil, how they can clash, and how they can co-exist, even in the same person. The setting, which plays a critical role in this short story because the grandmother shows her selfish