Blog #4 -- "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is an excellent example of Southern Grotesque/Gothic for a few reasons. For example, one of the criteria for Southern Grotesque is that a story may point out negative aspects of society. The grandmother, for example, is old-fashioned about race, though she probably doesn't mean any harm in her comments. She points out a little, impoverished black boy that has no pants on and calls him a "pickaninny." She then follows up with a story that portrays African Americans as poor and unintelligent. These sort of things were common well into the 1950s and 1960s, and even today there are some people who exhibit this sort of racial bigotry, malicious or not.

Another reasons "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a good example of this subgenre has to do with the setting and the characters. The setting can be largely described as rural Georgia, as any indication of an urban setting is usually described as being on the outskirts of a particular town or city. The main part of the story even takes place on a dirt road way back into the woods, away from any sort of civilization. As for the characters, the family aren't necessarily "grotesques" themselves, but I think it's safe to say that The Misfit fits the "secular grotesque" type. He has renounced his faith in God, feeling as if he's been lied to and wishing that he would have been there to see Jesus raise the dead so he would know the truth. He had been falsely imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, and while incarcerated, he seemed to experience an "enlightening" or some sorts. He makes allusions to crime and punishment (sins and Hell), and mentions that it doesn't matter what the crime (sin) is, it will still be punished (going to jail/Hell). While he may not be destroying his soul in order to save the mortal body, it's clear that he knows that no matter what he does, whether he remembers it or not, he will be punished for it in both this life and the next. I think he's killing people now so that he will remember exactly why he is being punished in the end.

Lastly, in Southern Grotesque, the plot line often includes irony and disturbing events. In the end, the story becomes both disturbing and ironic as the entire family is murdered on the side of the road (which was mentioned in passing earlier that if the grandmother was seen dead on the side of the highway, anyone would know immediately that she was a lady) ultimately by their brother, son, and uncle, The Misfit.