Week Nine - “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor

[Elodie Fichet]

Poor grandma! I really like the grandmother in the story, sadly I think I could relate to her: her nerdiness and deception seeing that people of the new generations do not care about culture as much as she did. I thought it was great! You could really see how cute she was yet how annoying she could get.  I really liked her character, typical yet very touching.

The children on the other side, fulfill their role perfectly in being utterly annoying and rude. O’Connor makes them come to life so vividly, it feels as if you have met them before. They are the archetype of the kids you hate to meet.

The tension is kept all along the story although toward the end you foresee the tragic denouement.

The way the Misfit talks is well portrayed, in an original way. Usually when writers want to transcribe a dialect or an uneducated way of talking, they butcher the words by adding or substituting letters but here O’Connor often substitute the whole word for another one of completely different meaning but similar sound, which I find interesting. (“She would of been a good woman” is one example).

In the end, the story is a little cliché but it is so beautifully crafted. The style is great and emotions are conveyed in a very nice manner. I just wished that O’Connor had put his style and effort in something a little more convincing, deeper because the last couple paragraphs does not really do it for me. There’s no big enough enlightenment or morale. The grandma was a good woman it seemed thus what the Misfit says is rendered useless… and also, a life lesson given from this character is not really plausible. Something about the son and his wife, or the detestable children would have been better I think.