A Good Man Is Hard To Find
connerlyons8
A Good Man Is Hard to Find is not the most pleasant story that I have ever read in my life. Starting off with the beginning of the piece, I could tell that the grandmother is a worry wart to the extreme. She talks about all of these irrational fears that she has. Or, at least in my mind they are irrational. She brings up the idea that she is scared of her cat dying; she is scared of this man called the Misfit. To put it simply, she is scared of many things. The way this story is written seems somewhat predictable. A family who is going on a little vacation, stops at a burger joint and hears about a house that they want to travel to. I am surprised that the grandmother was so willing to take her family to this mysterious house so willingly after hearing about all of the fears that she has. She does not put up much resistance to going to this house which seemed unlike her character. The car crash was very predictable for me while reading this piece as well. The Misfit showing up immediately after the accident with his little henchmen was no surprise to me either. I know in class a little while ago we had a discussion about art and pieces of literature that become too violent and then push people away from the work as a result. To me, this piece reminded me of that talk. The villains have no remorse for the family what so ever. They shoot everyone and that is the end. Kind of sick and twisted if you ask me. After the story there is a little question that asks; “What conventional social and religious values does the grandmother represent?” In my eyes she is defiantly a cookie cutter cut out of a Christian conservative. She attempts to solve The Misfits problems by leading him onto Jesus which he is not a fan of at all. Actually, one of the reasons I think that this man was so brutal to her was because she was trying to force beliefs down his throat and he was not into that one bit. It is hard for me to understand the quote; “She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” I don’t really understand The Misfit’s logic in this quote. This makes me believe that he hated her so much because of her religious beliefs and her definite attachment towards tradition. But, at the same time I think this man is just an extreme psycho which makes what he says less meaningful to me. What is the reader really supposed to gain from this story? A nice little family goes out on a vacation and they get killed by insane people. It is hard for me to gain much from this but I am looking forward to see what the panel comes up with tomorrow in class.