A Good Man is Hard to Find (Book Review Sample)

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A good man is hard to find
Flannery O'Connor is stunningly one of the most prosperous writers of our times who could ingeniously use fiction to generate stories that exclusively explained the real concerns that are affecting the society. Deeply grounded in the Gothic tradition, O'Connor offers a unique outlandish view of life.
Thesis: Drawing expansively from the story "a good man is hard to find," this paper will try to substantiate why a good man is undeniably hard to find, by offering a distinctive insight into the real challenges confronting individuals in their diurnal lives.
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a skeptical fiction, adamant in the way it brings out social triviality. It is a summer vacation and Bailey intends to take his family from Georgia to Florida but his mother advises him not to go that direction since an assassin called The Misfit was seen heading towards that direction. When leaving for Florida, the grandmother dressed in an ostentatious hat and best clothes so that incase an accident occurs, people will see her corpse and appreciate that she was a refined woman. Outrageously, the grandmother engages John Wesley and June Star in stories but the youngsters ignore it with disdain notwithstanding the fact that she was their grandmother whom they were expected to respect.
Grandmother reminiscences her teenage days. People were gracious and "did right then." the current society has degenerated and she confidently confesses, "a good man is hard to find." she says, "People are certainly not nice like they used to be." the family experiences adversities in their search for freedom, leisure and pleasure. Bailey and John are shot and the grandmother does nothing to save them; she pleads for her own life. She held grudge against Bailey and swore never to forgive him.
The grandmother’s acts of touching the Misfit undoubtedly elucidate that good men seldom exist. In the opening, grandmother was more concerned about being a reputable person than she really was. This is plainly illustrated by her self-centered desire to save her life even as her family members continued to perish around her and her resolution to go to Tennessee instead of Florida. She causes the deaths of the very people she was anticipated to protect. Her final act cannot be regarded as an act of charity since upon critical evaluation one realizes that she was trying to save her own life. In the end, grandmother realizes that she had not lived the good life she was expected to live. The Misfit, peeved by every deed of the grandmother, says, "She would have been a good woman, if there had been somebody to shoot her every minute of her life." However, it is important to understand that the grandmother wanted to live a good person but the many adversaries of the contemporary life curtailed her dream. The opportunities and challenges presented by the deceptively profligate life make it had for an individual to live a good life and be a good man. Personal interests often overcome society’s interests and one end up living life that cannot be perceived as good.
Grandmother uses the term ‘good’ illogically, misrepresenting the delineation of "good man" until the sticker loses its sense. Red Sammy angrily grumbles of the overall deceitfulness of people and the grandmother refers him as good though it later dawns on her that she was not any good. Sammy is caught unawares by being called good since he doubted whether he was a good man. Grandmother’s definition of "good" appears to embrace poor judgment, unwariness, and blind faith. Nevertheless, not a single of them is fundamentally "good." After the Misfit refutes answering the question whether he could shoot a woman, it significantly implies that he did not adhere to the moral codes of the grandmother. She frantically calls Misfit a good man. It appears as though she was pleasing to some fundamental va...