A good man is hard to find free essay sample

Flannery O’Connor? s book A Good Man Is Hard To Find, is composed of several short stories, one of which takes the tittle of the book. In this story the author, with the characters, the Grandmother, the protagonist, and the Misfit, the antagonist, exposes some ideas, by their behavior, also some symbols and some biblical ideas. In the story the author deal with the idea of â€Å"good† in different ways trying to show that only, because of being a â€Å"good man† doesn’t mean to be â€Å"moral† person. She represents most of these ideas by the character of the grandmother, who had, with the Misfit, a big role in the story becoming the two of them the major characters of the story. The grandmother represents a woman that thinks she is morally higher, she never thinks she can be wrong doesn’t seeing her hypocrisy and selfishness, until the point that she lies to her family about the location of a place, or lying to a children about a panel. We will write a custom essay sample on A good man is hard to find or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page For the grandmother a person that is a â€Å"good man† is that one that has the same thoughts as her, for example for the grandmother the Misfit a â€Å"good man† because she thinks that man couldn’t shoot a lady. The role of the lady is important because it appears since the beginning to the end of the story, just in the first pages of the story when the author shows what the grandmother wears for the journey: â€Å"†¦, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at one that she was a lady. † This last part of this fragment of the story represents really well the thoughts of the grandmother. The fact of the grandmother dressing to be identified if they have an accident anyone can recognized her, can be an previous event of the final part of the story, were the grandmother is killed by the Misfit, like if she had seen it before that that’s the day were she was going to die. The only thought of the grandmother of being a lady makes her expresses her selfishness because she only thinks that the most important thing is that she looks like a lady, also thinking she is superior only because of that, â€Å" â€Å"Jesus!†, the old lady cried. â€Å"You have good blood! I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not shoot a lady. I? ll give you all the money I? ve got! †. In the last part of the story you can see how the thoughts of the grandmother change completely when she realizes her own thinking and the errors she was committing, that’s only when she was facing the death just in front of her. She realizes that she is not as superior as she thought and that she can be treated like the other people, doesn’t matter if you are a lady or not â€Å"Why you are one of my babies. You are one of my own children! † and now when she can see the others at the same level as hers. But this moment of realization of this truth that open her mind and â€Å"open moral† it’s just followed by her death. In the story is also represented the idea of Grace, by the two characters, because they receive the Grace of God. The Misfit is a person that not seems to be the perfect persons to receive moral guidance or Grace, but is a person that has already look all the errors and actions he has done all over his life and try to find a way to learn about them. One this actions and lesson is simply his name, that he has renamed himself because he thinks the punishment they gave him for his action wasn’t the correct for that crime. Contrary to the Grandmother the Misfit knows he is not the best man in the world, but he also knows that there are others that are worse than him. With this the idea of Grace is presented in this story as a way in which almost people like the Grandmother or the Misfit can be saved by God. For example, the Grace come to the old lady just at the final of the story when she is going to day that she can clear her mind, just before she dies. It can be thought that the Misfit is not going to receive any Grace because he had already said â€Å"No pleasure but meanness†, but God bring him the opportunity to change. In conclusion, this story treats the idea of the moral and the good in a way in which people think they know about the idea of grace and God but they don’t really have any idea and they try to convince other about it. The grace is not something that you can teach because is something that is in us and only God can teach us or give it to us. The moral is something that we acquire with the time and with our experience through our life, because the moral is something that is in us and you have to look at it, being capable to see your actions and change with the lessons your learn from that experience so us to be a moral person. The story try to explain us that God is the one that give us the good way in this life doesn’t matter if you are a â€Å"lady† or you are a misfit, because God doesn’t care about the condition of the people and he is the one that can see the good of each person and because of that forgive them.