Style In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”
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Flannery OConnors style in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” helps create the story of a dysfunctional familys summer vacation gone wrong. OConnors use of dark humor, foreshadowing, and imagery helps communicate the storys main theme: people in todays society treat others with little or no respect, unlike past times. The story takes place in Georgia, where a family of six is about to leave on a vacation to Florida. The grandmother wants to go to Tennessee and tries to convince her son Bailey and the rest of the family to go as well, but no one seems to listen to her or care about her opinion. On the way to Florida, grandmother remembers an old plantation she used to visit from her youth, and the family drives down an old dirt road to see it. They get in an automobile accident and an escaped criminal called the Misfit and his accomplices come upon the family and murder them.
As grandmother tries to convince the family to go to Tennessee, she is referred to as “old lady” which seems to give her a senile-like quality. She tries to persuade Bailey and his wife by telling them about the Misfit. She tells the young couple that she “wouldnt take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldnt answer to my conscience if I did” (1031). However, Bailey doesnt even “look up from his reading” and the “childrens mother didnt seem to hear her” (1031). It is this type of insolent disregard for one another that gets the family into trouble, and ultimately leads to their death.
As the family leaves for Florida, grandmother seems quite cheerful although Bailey has gone against her wishes; she cautions him of the speed limit and she points out interesting details of the scenery, but “the children were reading comic magazines and their mother had gone to sleep” (1032). Although grandmother tries to make the trip as interesting as possible, the little boy, John Wesley, adamantly says, “Lets go through Georgia fast so we dont have to look at it much” (1032). Even the young children disregard their grandmother and treat her with no respect whatsoever.
As the family waits for their lunch at The Tower, the owner, Red Sam, and grandmother begin to talk about people and how they are “certainly not nice like they used to be” that “a good man is hard to find” (1034). The use of foreshadowing here builds the story up to the introduction of the Misfit and his accomplices. While the outside world is being terrorized by vicious men such as the Misfit, grandmother cant even find a good man in her family.
As the familys car races down an old dirt road toward the plantation, and farther and farther from civilization, the grandmother begins to wonder if she had been mistaken about the location. The road is described as having “sharp curves on dangerous embankments” and that the family “would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next