Abstract
“A Good Man is Hard to find” is a story about a woman, grandmother, who feels that she is superior to others. She believes that she is better in the eyes of God than any other person. The story focuses on five main themes, good versus evil, family, religion, Manipulation, and society and class. This will be my literature of discussion. I will focus on the themes to establish the rationale and the use of characters to portray such themes. I will also play a devil’s advocate so as to establish the genuine position of each character in regard to the themes discussed. After analysis of the various themes portrayed by the books, I will compare them with other literary works to get a clearer picture of the themes used. My research will take a period of six week starting with reading the book a number of times to enable me understand the book into more details. The other week will involve reading five more literary works focusing on the specific themes in the book. Finally, I will use may notes and my critical understanding to critically analyse the five main themes in the book. The findings will be reported and then documented.
My research paper will focus on the critical analysis of themes portrayed by Flannery O’Connor’s novel “A good Man is hard to find”. The book focuses on the life in American South. It covers the some of the worst time in the American history. The book tells the story of the kind of life in the South during the period of slavery. It goes to describe the kind of pride and glory felt by the victors of the Civil war. It vividly narrates the kind of isolation and neglect the locals experienced during the period of post-civil war (Bethea 2). The themes in the book that will be discussed and analysed include religion, the issue of Good and Evil, Manipulation, family, society and class. By so doing, I will be able to critically understand how O’Connor uses her tone of realism to bring up the issues. Below is a brief discussion of the themes I am planning to critically analyse.
The theme of good is portrayed in the novel by the use of a grandmother character. On the other hand, the Misfits character was used to depict the instance of evil. The perception of goodness and badness differs between the grandmother and the Misfit. The grandmother focuses both on the superficial goodness and the inner goodness. Misfit believes that the punishment for evil is not commensurate. I will therefore try to play the devil’s advocate to establish the real difference between good and evil.
In the theme of religion, there is a question of whether the grandmother is genuinely religious. On the other hand, does the Misfit really believe in Jesus Christ? However evil the misfit was portrayed to be, it turns out that his faith in Jesus is greater than that of the grandmother. At this point, I will also play the devil’s advocate in order to establish who more religious between the Misfit and the grandmother is.
I will also study the theme of manipulation. My main character of focus will be the woman who used her manipulative powers to get whatever she wants. It is important to know whether she continued to manipulate people even after she was unable to sae her own self. I will also focus on the manipulation between grandmother and the Misfit. It is important to establish whether grandmother was manipulating Misfit all along or she intended good for him.
In the theme of family, it is important to establish whether the families depicted in the novels are a representation of real families or they are just caricature. From a first reader like me, the family conjures a lot of sympathy. The kind of life they live and how they keep on getting into the nerves of each other (Bausch 59). At this point, I will also use the devil’s advocate establish whether the grandmother was really concerned about her family or not.
Finally, I will focus on the issues of society and class. The different social classes have been used in the novel. There are the rich who are associated with good as well as the poor who are associated by bad (Nisly 19). I will establish how the character of were used to depict various social classes in the economy. I will also review some other literatures relating to the themes of the text. I am planning to undertake my research in seven weeks. The table below shows my planned schedule of work in the seven weeks.
Reference
Bausch, Richard, ed. The Norton anthology of short fiction. WW Norton & Company, 2015.
Bethea, Arthur F. "O'Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find." The Explicator 64.4 (2006): 246-249.
Nisly, L. Lamar. Impossible to Say: Representing Religious Mystery in Fiction by Malamud, Percy, Ozick, and O'Connor. No. 12. Praeger Pub Text, 2002.
