“A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND” FLANNERY O’CONNOR Brian Compton, Eve Lu, Vijay N Prasad, Hannah Szarko

Ms. Zalac

AP English Literature and Composition

16 November 2016

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

  Does being a good person entail decency, nobility, wealth, social position, or piousness?   Are sinners those who are simply lost or looking for salvation?

GENERAL CONTEXT

  Setting: rural Georgia, 1940s or 50s, vague spatial setting, no exact locations   Exact time is unsure; ambiguous details perhaps aren’t pertinent to O’Connor   Genre: Southern Gothic   Point of View: third person limited omniscience (understand the grandmother’s thoughts and feelings)

(Gordon)

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

  Southern Roots and Sentiments   Brown v. Board of Education (1954)   Pre-Civil Rights Movement

ADVANCEMENTS IN THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY

  Chevrolet introduces the 1955 V8 engine   Family vacations (road trips) became commonplace   Eisenhower’s $101 billion plan for national highway system

(Gordon)

AUTHOR BACKGROUND: 1925 – 1964

  Native of Savannah, Georgia   Father struck with lupus   O’Connor also died from lupus   Wise Blood (first novel) published in 1952, won Rinehart-Iowa Fiction Award

(“Flannery”) (Encyclopedia Britannica)

CHARACTERIZATION

SOUTHERN WOMEN: CHALLENGING SOCIETY’S NORMS AND SOCIAL POSITION

  “Burdensome models of femininity” (Gleeson-White)   “Self-satisfied in their apparent virtues” (Gleeson-White)   Nobility is cordon sanitaire (protection from harm)

THE GRANDMOTHER: AN ANALYSIS

  Central character   “God chooses the grandmother to plant the seed of grace in the Misfit” (Bethea)   Vanity corrected by death   Three bullets in chest allude to the Trinity (Father, Son, Holy Ghost)   Misplaced values à Hypocritical as she judges and condemns others yet she doesn’t look to her own faults

THE MISFIT: AN ANALYSIS

  “Prophet gone wrong” (Bethea)   Should seek divinity because nothing tangible on earth suits his needs   Confesses that had he been with Jesus at the time, he wouldn’t have turned out a sinner (serial killer)

MINOR CHARACTERS

  Bailey: father of the household, Pitty Sing (ironic name) is cat of Baily’s mother à static character   Bailey’s wife: upholds passivity of domestic Southern housewife à static character   John Wesley, June Star, the Baby: Bailey’s self-centered, bratty children à static characters   Red Sammy Butts: bar-b-que restaurant operator   Hiram, Bobby Lee: escaped convicts travelling with the Misfit à static characters   Hold tradition of respecting women (took great care of them being

execution in the forest)

  Edgar Atkins Teagarden: man who courted Grandmother many years ago

THEMES

GOOD AND EVIL

   “ ‘I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did.’ ”

  The Misfit says: “ ‘sooner or later you're going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it.’ ”

   “ ‘She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.’ ”

(O’Connor)

RELIGION, FAITH, AND SALVATION

  “ ‘If you would pray, Jesus would help you…’ ”   “ ‘I was a gospel singer for a while. I been most everything. Been in the arm service both land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet…’ ”

(O’Connor)

SOCIETY IN THE 1950S

  Grandmother believes in noble people of great statue   Hat symbolizes place in society as a lady, outfit she wears dead on the side of the road   “ ‘In my time children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else’ ”

(O’Connor)

ALLUSIONS

TONES

~ Juxtaposition between a Comical Tone and Heartless Murder ~

CARICATURING OR GROTESQUE

  “June Star said ‘He reminds me of a pig’ ” (referring to Bobby Lee)   “The grandmother raised her head like a parched old turkey hen crying for water”   “Young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like rabbit's ears”

(O’Connor)

BLASÉ

  Conversational violence    “Highly unladylike…a brutal irony, a slam-banger humor, and a style of writing as balefully direct as a death sentence” – Time magazine (Meyer 276)

PLACID

  Sense of peacefulness à opposite of suspense as there is no building action   Flawless transition of events in time that makes the systematic murder of the family abrupt, unanticipated

RECAP: TONE

  Grotesque   Caricaturing   Blasé   Placid

WRITING STYLE: DETACHED

§  Detached narrator that depicts plot in a manner making the audience unable to connect with the characters

§  Simple syntax makes the context clear amidst language of the Misfit (accents and colloquialisms)

IRONY

SITUATIONAL IRONY

  Killers long for Southern tradition   Gentlemen by nature   Respect women and children   Quietly murder the family with no thought to morals

VERBAL IRONY

  “ ‘I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did’ ” (O’Connor)   “ ‘Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!’ ” (O’Connor)   Vain act of compassion and tenderness à almost a character reversal (the Grandmother)

VERBAL IRONY

  “ ‘I know you're a good man. You don't look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!’ ” (O’Connor) à first interaction with the Misfit.   She takes him for an

honorable man and insists he is simply looking for salvation in Jesus through his actions

   Irony is that she underestimates the power of evil in the Misfit

  She insists she understands people à makes too many raw assumptions based on outward appearance

VERBAL IRONY

  “ ‘In case of an accident anyone seeing the dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady’ ” (O’Connor)   Ironic statement foreshadowing the climax of the plot   Highlights Grandmother’s ideas of the importance of human perception   Narcissistic in nature à concerned with outward appearance

VERBAL IRONY: THE GRANDMOTHER

  Perceives self as an intelligent, upright, noble Southern women yet she is racist   She doesn’t actually respect others and she is a terrible judge of character   Lies about the cat causing the accident à “Do not lie” Leviticus 19:11   Falsely remembered the plantation was in Tennessee, not Georgia à not intelligent   Informs children that little black children are not well to do like Southern country folks à bigot, racist comments

RECAP: IRONY

  Inability to reconcile with the fact that she cannot distinguish good men from evil ones   Inability to shut her mouth led to systematic deaths of family   Reflect on idea that grandmother, although she resisted the trip in the beginning, was responsible for family’s doom

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

  Does being a good person entail decency, nobility, wealth, social position, or piousness?   Are sinners those who are simply lost or looking for salvation?

WORKS CITED

   Allen, Linda. “What Is the Significance of John Wesley's and June Star's Names in ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’”- Homework Help - ENotes.com. Enotes.com. Enotes.com, Web. 08 Nov. 2015.

   Bethea, Arthur F. “O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Explicator 64.4 (2006): 246. Advanced Placement Source. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.

  Gleeson-White, Sarah. “A Peculiarly Southern Form Of Ugliness: Eudora Welty, Carson Mccullers, And Flannery O’Connor.” Southern Literary Journal 36.1 (2003): 46. Advanced Placement Source. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.

  Gordon, Sarah. “Flannery O’Connor (1925 – 1964).” New Georgia Encyclopedia. 08 June 2015. Web. 09 November 2015.

  Meyer, Michael. “Fiction in Depth: A Study of Flannery O'Connor.” Literature to Go. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 276. Print.

  O'Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” The University of Virginia. The University of Virginia, Web. 08 Nov. 2015.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

   Link, Alex. “Means, Meaning, And Mediated Space In ‘Good Man Is Hard To Find.’” Southern Quarterly 44.4 (2007): 125. Advanced Placement Source. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.

   Shmoop Editorial Team. “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Shmoop. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.

   SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.

   “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” California: 20th Century Fox, 2008. Enotes. Gale Cengage Learning. Web. 8 Nov. 2015.