"A Good Man is Hard to Find" Writen by F. O'Connor (Essay Sample)

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A Good Man is hard to find.
“A Good Man Is Hard to find” is a great literature piece of work which is a short story that was published in the year 1955. The story was authored by an influential literature writer known as Flannery O’Connor. It later developed to become one of the most successful pieces of work that she had ever written. In her book, she was capable of incorporating fictional work and presence of high level of humor and emotional responsiveness that contrasted violent actions performed by some of her carefully selected and personified characters. O'Connor was a sternly devoted roman catholic which is also evident in the way she encompasses her catholic beliefs in her story especially when she tries to bring out the purpose God plays in human's day to day life. O’Connor had successfully authored other great and attractive short stories which have been highly rated over the past years, they include; The violent bear it away and Wise blood. (Brinkmeyer and Robert, 4-11). Flannery O’Connor was born in the Southern city of Savannah Georgia on March 25, 1925. She came from a financially stable family as she was able to attend Midelgevile high school in Georgia. Unfortunately, her father, Edward Francis O'Connor passed on while she was still too young at the age of only sixteen years. Later, she attended Georgia College for women where she majored in social sciences. In 1947, Lowa state University honored her with a master's degree in her writing and publications. During the year 1948, she attended the prestigious Yaddo writers’ colony in New York, where she concentrated on her first ever novel, “Wise blood”. However, despite her continuous success in literature and writing, O’Connor wasn’t lucky enough to live much longer after she was diagnosed with lupus disease that had earlier claimed the life of her father. She passed on at the age of only 39 years. (Getz et al, 3-14).
O’Connor short piece “A Good Man Is Hard to find” is described as a special and unique type of a short narrative that is revealed by a third person narrator but which sorely concentrates on her grandmother view of occurrences and events. The story is also sensational due to the fact that O’Connor has been to be able to infuse violent occurrences, humor and her stern catholic beliefs in it. This concept have been very significant in trying to generate a special and unique flow of events through her fictions and systematic occurrences of scenes as they are displayed in her story. It was so influential and unique that even a writer of The New York books review named Caroline Gordon noted that O’Connor story was “characterized by precision, density, and an almost alarming circumscription”. In the early 1950s, not many readers believed that a staunch Roman Catholic believer would infuse such violent scenes and God's grace in the same story, therefore, she seemed to have defiled all odds in her ability to marry this two distant concepts in one story. This made her story to stand out as one of the best unique and precisely written short story in her days and stretching on up to date. O'Connor story has always been appreciated for her complicated and contradictive nature of her stories especially the one displayed in this story. Likewise, the character selection and definition is another concept which makes her story very unique, throughout O’Connor’s story “A Good Man is hard to find” she has been capable of precisely selecting outstanding characters who are described as being strange but also interesting. The story has also been able to bring out two perspectives of the writer; one as being the devoted staunch roman catholic who stands with her beliefs about God’s control over human actions and the other view of her as a completely different person who is capable of visualizing violent characters and scenes throughout her attractive story. Over the past few decades, O'Connor's story still stands out as one of the most unique and attractive short stories to have been written. (Caroline, 5).
The clarity, preciseness, attractiveness and uniqueness of O’Connor’s narrative has been as a result of her accurate and careful application of literature styles and techniques as she tries to perfect her story. She has been able to use well-articulated literature skills and technicalities to produce such an extraordinary flow and specialty in her story. O’Connor as applied numerous literature styles which include; irony, symbolism, foreshadowing, structure, tone and little personification.
The irony is a literature style that is used by writers to signify the opposite of what one is meaning or talking about. As a stylistic mechanism in literature, it is used to impart the opposite of what things seem to be thereby it is considered as one of the most difficult literature styles to identify in stories especially in short stories. However, O’Connor has been able to apply this style perfectly throughout her captivating story. Irony can occur in different ways such as dramatic irony which simply means the reader of the piece understands something differently from what the character intended to mean, a good illustration of dramatic irony in O’Connor’s story is the unexpected interaction that exists between the grandmother's family and the so-called misfit. At this point, the readers are mainly concentrated in the intensity of this situation of the relationship between the misfits and the family but the characters have little or no idea about any of these issues. There is also a different kind of irony known as verbal irony that is portrayed in the story whereby the family’s grandmother is quoted saying that “I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that a loose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did”. Surprisingly, she does the unexpected by taking the family on a vacation where they end up interacting with the misfit. (O’Connor, 3-17).
Symbolism is another stylistic technique of literature writing that has been widely used in O’Connor’s story. Symbolism refers to a style in literature that involves the use of symbols to identify qualities, characters, and ideas. It is mainly important in ensuring that the author uses these symbols so as to communicate to the readers in more simplistic and understandable manner. O’Connor has displayed symbolism in various scenes in her story starting with the skies and weather that she mainly uses to describe various characters way of thinking. At another point, almost at the end of the story O’Connor symbolizes a man being chased by a scary thundercloud which simply represents the guilty consciousness of the am due to the fact that he had earlier abandoned his own physically and mentally challenged wife during an evening roadside dinner. The symbol of an old house that the grandmother persistently keeps referring to in the story is an example of the use of symbolism since it represents her desire to live in past times rather present times where she thinks people of the past time were more decent and disciplined than the present people. (O’Connor, 5-18).
O'Connor has successfully incorporated tone as literature style in order to bring out an attractiveness quality in her story. This technique creates a unique sense of O'Connor's story since it is based on a third person narrator. The tone of the story's narrator can be described as being ironical humorous and with intensity and weight. The tone of the narrator as in most cases in the story been able to illustrate humorous situations and occasions. Through her tone, she describes all the faulty and incompetent nature of her characters which prohibits the readers from being sympathetic to the characters. The tone ensures that the readers can judge the characters justly based on their actions and characteristics. O’Connor has been able to perfectly vary the tone of the narrator thereby creating different emotions at different scenes of the story. At the end of the story, she narrates at a deep dark tone as she tries to demonstrate the power of common people belonging to the family trying to overcome the daring misfit as it appears to the family. (James, Missy and Merickel, 17-51).
O’Connor has also presented her story using the foreshadowing style in a big way. She has used this writing style in various scenes in her story. Foreshadowing is explained as an indicator of future events or things expected to occur, these indicators are used presently to represent such issues that may occur in future. This literature technique is used to create expectations in the reader's minds during the beginning of the story about events that likely occur at the end of the narrative. Foreshadowing is usually associated with suspense. It has been demonstrated in this story in numerous scenarios such as when O'Connor's introduces the so-called misfits who eventually turns to kill the family. Misfit is defined as foreshadow since he represents bad things expected to happen at the end of the story. The grandmothers costume as they prepare to return home after the vacation she describes that she will be “Dressed in
a polka-dot dress trimmed wit...