Essay Database

The short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor could be viewed as a comic strip about massacre and martyrdom. What stops it from becoming a solemn story is its intensity, ambition, and unfamiliarity. O'Connor blends the line between humor and terror as she uses a “reasonable use of the unreasonable”. She introduces her audience to the horror of self-love both with Hulga in “Good Country People” and with the grandmother …

…every minute of her life,". The satirical and the saintly have completely blended together in this one sentence. Basically, the only way the grandmother could have been good and sustain that goodness was if someone were to threaten her with death daily. There is something about the grandmother that has made the Misfit uncomfortable. The old women's behavior is a mystery that confronts not only the Misfit but also the reader's traditional ideas about goodness.