A Good Man Is Hard To Find

5 Pages 1205 Words

In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” we get a portrait of a 1950s postwar family who, in the midst of their own naivety, find themselves not only on the road from Atlanta, Georgia to Florida but on the road to the their own demise. The most outstanding character in this story is the grandmother, and since the story is told from the third person omniscient view, it will be easy for us to analyze the grandmother’s character. She connects the other characters together throughout the story with her own selfishness and stupidity, and through a self-realization which becomes the most important moment in the story.
As the story opens, the scene is set in the home of a man named Bailey and his family which consists of his mother (the grandmother), his wife and their two children—June Star and John Wesley. Bailey is planning a trip to Florida, but the grandmother would rather go to Tennessee. We see the first sign of the grandmother’s selfishness here when she tries to convince her son, Bailey, to take the family to Tennessee. She does her persuasion through a newspaper article which says that a convict called The Misfit has escaped from the Federal Penitentiary in Florida. She says, “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscious if I did.” We will see how this statement becomes the epitome of irony in the next few paragraphs.
While the family is on the road to from Atlanta to Florida, the scene changes to a filling station and dance hall called The Tower. While the family is eating Red Sammy’s barbecue sandwiches, the grandmother carries on a very foreshadowing conversation with Red Sam. “These days you don’t know who to trust,” he said. “Ain’t that the truth?”… “A good man is hard to find.” If the grandmother knows this and makes these assertions, then why does she so naïve and quick to trust The Mi...