“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” (1955) Flannery O’Connor

1950s South Evolving transportation fueled by the popularity of the family car and development of the U.S. highway system. Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case that helped to divide the “Old South” from the “New South.” Gender Roles: Women were always in the kitchen or at home.

Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) American Southern writer of short stories and novels known for their depiction of spiritual insight in extreme situations. Born in Savannah, Georgia; Georgia State College for Women; started writing stories and drawing cartoons; devout Roman Catholic all of her life. Received M.F.A. from University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She contrasts between polished, neat form of stories and grotesque, unsettling content.

O’Connor with Self-Portrait

Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) Novels: Wise Blood (1952); The Violent Bear It Away (1960); Short Story collections: A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955); Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965). Developed lupus after first novel, returned to Milledgeville, GA, to her mother’s farm—raised peacocks and wrote. Her writing is known as “Southern Gothic” or “Southern Grotesque.”

Doubles An unsettling story of a grandmother’s unlikely recognition of a serial killer as being like one of her own children. O’Connor’s most famous story because it dramatizes profound modern fears of actually encountering the random violence we see daily in the mass media.

Grandmother Sees herself as “a lady”: “in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” (¶12) Racist: “Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!” (¶18) Nostalgic for the antebellum South: the old plantation (¶45)

Grandmother Childish and domineering: Complains about going to Florida but is first in the car. Antagonistic relationship with son, Bailey: hides cat in basket in car; Bailey “glared at her” when she asked him to dance (29). Full of clichés: “Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now” (44) Superficial: writes down car’s mileage (11).

Grandmother & Misfit: Doubles Grandmother recognizes Misfit as like a son, in need of her love. Misfit seems to recognize what the Grandmother has achieved (“She would of been a good woman”), and his need for her—but rejects love, choosing “meanness” instead.

O’Connor’s Comments “I often ask myself what makes a story work . . . and I have decided that it is probably some action, some gesture of a character that is unlike any other in the story. . . . This would have to be an action which was both totally right and totally unexpected.”

O’Connor’s comments “The Grandmother is at last alone, facing the Misfit. Her head clears for an instant and she realizes, even in her limited way, that she is responsible for the man before her and joined to him by ties of kinship which have their roots deep in the mystery she has been merely prattling about so far. And at this point, she does the right thing, makes the right gesture.”

O’Connor’s comments “I prefer to think that, however unlikely this may seem, the old lady’s gesture, like the mustard-seed, will grow to be a great crow-filled tree in the Misfit’s heart, and will be enough of pain to him there to turn him into the prophet he was meant to become. But that’s another story.”