A Good Man is Hard to Find
Among American writers of the twentieth century, Flannery O’Connor holds a special place and has solid reputation as a representative of the unique American fiction subgenre – southern gothic. Despite being rather short, most of her stories convey important moral, cultural and philosophical messages while her peculiar techniques and choices reflect her own background.
Indeed, Flannery O’Connor is among the writers whose literary legacy is closely intertwined with her biography, her family background, beliefs, experiences and challenges she was burdened with in the course of her rather brief life. The complex set of environmental factors which shaped her as a writer finds its reflection in one of her most popular short stories, A Good Man in Hard to Find.
Probably, one of the most obvious aspects of O’Connor’s biography finding their reflection in her prose is the geographical and hence cultural setting she was born, raised and lived her entire life in. The writer’s family history is interwoven of the history of Georgia beginning with the nineteenth century, and both maternal and paternal lines of her relatives originate from either Milledgeville or Savannah (May 18).
While the South is O’Connor’s birthplace and the location she was raised in, she spent her entire life in seclusion in a farm near Milledgeville and did not receive much public attention (May 18). However, southern mentality and culture really shaped her artistic vision which is mirrored in her stories and in the discussed short story as well.
The connection of O’Connor’s geographic environment with her prose finds an obvious expression in her choice of location for A Good Man is Hard to Find. In the short story, the writer locates the narrative in Georgia, an authentically ‘southern’ state, and eventually counterposes it to Florida. As Hendricks (129) brilliantly notes, O’Connor depicts two modern families – those of Red Sammy and Bailey “who are far gone in spiritual exile”, with Bailey’s family being “completely indifferent to their roots in the old South”.
As the family are on their way to ‘artificial’ Florida for vacation, the author goes on briefly describing landscapes and nature of Georgia, the location she knows so well. Flannery O’Connor might have implied criticism of the spiritual detachment from one’s native place, and in this case Georgia and the South in general, opposing it to her own attachment to her origins and native state: the boy in the story states that “Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground” [] and Georgia is a lousy state too” (O’Connor).
In addition, the story contains elements of racial issues which were especially visible in the southern states of O’Connor’s childhood and youth. Such traces of race relations are observed in the stories the grandmother tells to her grandchildren, for instance, the story about a noble man who brought watermelons to a lady and a ‘nigger’ boy. It is even quite possible that these stories are somehow rooted in the author’s own experiences and memories of living in the racialized South.
In his biographical account, May (17) states that Flannery O’Connor was born with the two key factors which formed her literary style, and one of these factors is her inherent predisposition to development of lupus, a disease which cut her father’s life short and became the burden dominating over her adult life. Once she was diagnosed with lupus in 1952, she settled down in her ancestral farm in Milledgeville and struggled against her disease growing ducks and travelling to give lectures on literature and faith from time to time despite her health condition. Being burdened by this disease, O’Connor suffered from it throughout her adulthood and hence produced multiple characters characterized by various illnesses, disabilities or deformities – in different aspects.
At the same time, it is quite obvious that the writer accepted her challenge and literally embraced the thought about her death sentence. Quite naturally, such a significant factor could not be overlooked in analysis of the writer’s contribution to literature.
A Good Man is Hard to Find, in turn, contains subtle hints at the author’s disease and suffering, and the overall tone of the story is dominated by a kind of grotesque dark humor. In the story, the convict recognized by the grandmother states that “she would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (O’Connor).
Indeed, the gun pointed at the entire family and at the grandmother in particular seems to be a symbolic expression for suffering, and a remarkable fact in such symbolism is that O’Connor does not equal suffering to evil. In fact, she seems to be promoting her own perception of suffering as that of an inseparable companion of goodness. “The gun of lupus shot her father and she lived with it pressed against her side” (Basselin 82); and the gun of suffering seems to keep all people at gunpoint.
Thereby, O’Connor’s own perception of suffering as an inevitable aspect of goodness is conveyed in her character’s struggle. Indeed, the grandmother seems to be a skilled manipulator and a somewhat selfish woman until she comes across the callous convict on the run and faces the danger of death.
It seems that for the writer good lies not in the lack of suffering but in the way a person accepts and embraces it. Apparently, in O’Connor’s life the disease was a kind of purifying suffering which fostered her moral improvement, while the gun pointed at the grandmother is a ‘creative’ force which evokes her best moral traits; yet it is too late.
The second inherent biographical feature characterizing O’Connor’s life which was mentioned by May (17) is her ardent Catholic background, for she was born in one of the oldest and most devout Catholic families in the South. In fact, her religious background and influence of the church shaped her worldview, morality and perception to the great extent. Growing up in the Bible Belt state in the traditional Christian environment produced a great impact on her moral concerns, perceptions and experiences.
Remarkably, the untimely death of Flannery’s father caused – as in her own case – by lupus did not destroy her faith or evoke anger or the sense of injustice in relation to God. Instead, O’Connor gripped on her faith even harder, and it generally helped her to understand herself as well as behaviors and imperfections of other people.
In the discussed story, Flannery O’Connor’s religious background finds a vivid reflection, for the critical episode of the story, the one featuring the Misfit and the grandmother involved in the discussion, reveals the allusion to the fundamental religious mysteries of good and evil, as noted by Desmond (144).
“A central principle of O’Connor’s Catholic theology, expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas and other theologians, is that evil has no being, and that evil always appears as a good to the one who commits it, i.e., as something good for him” (Desmond 144).
Thereby, this principle supported by O’Connor literally blurs the line between the protagonist and the antagonist, between good and evil, between righteous and villainous characters. Moreover, O’Connor herself called the Misfit a “spoiled prophet” and was deeply interested in the role of the prophet in development of culture (Hendricks 128).
The character of the convict reflects these facts through comparing himself to Jesus, musing over the latter’s resurrecting the dead and reflecting on good and evil. According to Hendricks (128), “the role of the prophet is to maintain the purity of the nation’s spiritual life”, and as O’Connor supported this prophetic view of history, it is quite natural that she positioned the Misfit in the place of a wretched prophetic figure who either purifies the grandmother’s thoughts or simply makes her wheedle.
The common and completely plausible assumption is that the author’s background and experience influences art s/he produces, for art and literature are not produces in vacuum. As it can be seen from O’Connor’s short stories and particularly through closer reading of A Good Man is Hard to Find, family, religious and cultural background of Flannery O’Connor produced a great impact on her literary work.
A writer with the distinctive and rather challenging life path enclosed in the cultural environment of the South, O’Connor produced the reflection of her Christian identity, her struggles with lupus and her cultural experiences in Georgia in themes interwoven in the plot, literary symbolism, narrative locations and characters of A Good Man is Hard to Find and other stories.
Works Cited
Basselin, Timothy J. Flannery O'connor : Writing A Theology Of Disabled Humanity. n.p.: Waco, Tex. : Baylor University Press, [2013], 2013. GCU Library Catalog. Web. 19 June 2016.
Desmond, John, and Charles E. May. "Flannery O'connor's Misfit And The Mystery Of Evil." Critical Insights: Flannery O'connor (2011): 144-154.Literary Reference Center. Web. 19 June 2016.
Hendricks, T. W., and Charles E. May. "Flannery O'connor's "Spoiled Prophet.." Critical Insights: Flannery O'connor (2011): 128-143. Literary Reference Center. Web. 19 June 2016.
May, Charles E. "Biography Of Flannery O'connor." Critical Insights: Flannery O'connor (2011): 17-22. Literary Reference Center. Web. 19 June 2016.
O’Connor, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find, 1955. Web. June 20, 2016. <http://www.boyd.k12.ky.us/userfiles/447/Classes/28660/A%20Good%20Man%20Is%20Hard%20To%20Find.pdf>
