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The short story “A Good Man is Hard to find” has a lot of different themes involved. Since a long time ago there has being a issue of good versus evil, and that’s one of the themes. It also has other themes like: family, religion, society, and class.
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“ Amazing as always, gave her a week to finish a big assignment and came through way ahead of time. ”
Good versus evil is developed because the grandmother has a confrontation with a superficial sense of goodness and a criminal who is evil. Religion is involved because the grandmother think that the Misfit is a good man, by her beliefs.
On the other hand, family is included because there we just like a basic family, adults arguing and the two kids in the back. The grandmother in “A Good Man is Hard to Find' gives great importance to being 'a lady,' and her ideas about what that means reflect an old-fashioned, somewhat upper-crust Southern mindset. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor shows the dfferent types of themes that are in the story, these themes are: good vs evil, family, religion, society, and class.
“A Good Man is Hard to Find' is confrontation of between a grandmother with a rather superficial sense of goodness, and a criminal who embodies real evil. The grandmother seems to treat goodness mostly as a function of being decent, having good manners, and coming from a family of 'the right people'. The grandmother describes her family as “the right people” because they supposedly raised her the right way. The Misfit is the criminal who embodies real evil, the grandmother and the Misfit met in Florida.
The Misfit who seems straightforwardly evil, with little to no sense of guilt, and a genuine, desires to do cruel or destructive things for their own sake. Understanding the motivations of The Misfit, and what 'goodness' means by contrast, is one of the central puzzles of the story.
The grandmother and The Misfit had a another conformation between each other in that revolves around Jesus and religion. The grandmother brings up praying to Jesus in the hope that she can induce The Misfit to spare her life by appealing to his religious sense. It turns out, however, that The Misfit has probably thought about Jesus more seriously than she has. The Misfit know about Jesus, but he doubts him. The Misfit thinks that there is no real right or wrong, and no ultimate point to life. At the story's climax, the grandmother appears to receive a moment of divine grace, which might transform her and The Misfit. How this ending is understood is the major question of the story.
'A Good Man is Hard to Find' contains some funny comedy about a family, and the ways they get on each other's nerves. They were the kind of family that could be in a movie. There's the two troublesome and annoying kids, the hot-headed dad who tries to maintain control of a situation and fails, the wife busy attending to the baby, and the grandmother, who's a case all to herself. This story is like a comedy, there are a couple of movies or tv shows that are similar to this. Even though it starts as a comedy, it takes a serious turn when the family encounters a criminal, who kills them one by one.
The grandmother in 'A Good Man is Hard to Find' gives great importance to being 'a lady,' and her ideas about what that means reflect an old-fashioned, and a Southern mindset. She uses the n-word and longs for the good old days when kids were polite, people were trustworthy, and there were pretty plantations to visit. All of this leads her to associate being “good” with coming from a respectable family and behaving like a member of her social class. Her sensibilities are in for quite a shock when she meets The Misfit.
In conclusion, a story can have several different themes in it. Even though the story started about a normal family, they all ended up dying. It is ironic to see the Misfit on the newspaper, and then find in in person. The main characters were the Misfit and the grandmother. The two main characters were involved in most of the themes. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor clearly shows the different types of themes that are in the story, these themes are: good vs evil, family, religion, society, and class.
Understanding Themes in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. (2021, Mar 06). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/understanding-themes-in-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-essay
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