Dr. Dewoody
English II
14 April 2016
A Good Man is Hard to Find
The short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor is a cynical scope into the way that the human nature can illuminate manipulation and selfish pettiness. The manipulation that the grandmother inflicts onto her family leads the family onto a destructive path that ultimately ends in horror. The grandmother is not evil, however she had bad actions that cannot be justified. The grandmother’s view of morality has more to do with whether or not her family agrees with her than what is done in good nature.
The grandmothers nature of corrupt morality can be seen in her interactions with Red Sammy. When the family takes a stop on the trip to eat lunch, She and Red Sammy interact and connect over their common views that “These days you don’t know who to trust” and that “People are certainly …show more content…
Well, not until the last part of her life when she tried to save herself and reach out to him in a loving way. The Misfit says, “She would of been a good woman [...] if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”(437) It was only the immediate threat of death that was compelling this woman to contemplate the real connection between two human beings. Looking past the ideas of social equality, in the end, one’s social status is never a factor in the measure of one’s goodness. The title of this story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” reflects the theme that the ideas of a good man in the grandmother's eyes are flawed to only agree with people that have a similar social status, or share the same views as herself. The grandmother manipulates every situation that she was in. She was not evil like the misfit, however she was not a good woman in the least. Her actions cannot be justified unless her life is at stake, her view of morality is subject to situations and social