"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the antagonist in Flannery O'Connor's short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find". The paper analyzes his struggles with finding meaning in life. His existential probing is not reflected in any of the other characters in the story. Because of his genuine existential queries and the emotional numbness that he has cultivated throughout his life, O'Connor manages to portray a deadly psychopath in a sympathetic light.

From the Paper:

""I call myself The Misfit," he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit all I gone through in punishment," (O'Connor 131). The antagonist in Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" struggles with finding meaning in life. His existential probing is not reflected in any of the other characters in the story. Because of his genuine existential queries and the emotional numbness that he has cultivated throughout his life, O'Connor manages to portray a deadly psychopath in a sympathetic light. The reader is encouraged to relate more to the killer than to the tale's protagonist: the nameless Grandmother who is demanding, talkative, and stubborn. Her family is portrayed in a similarly ambiguous and unsympathetic light: Bailey continuously laments their "predicament" without truly standing up to the Misfit and his gang. The little girl June Star pipes up at annoying moments and even demonstrates morbidity, as when she exclaims after the accident, "But nobody's killed." The narrator notes that June Star said those words "with disappointment." The only "good man" in the story might be the ancillary character Red Sam, who utters the phrase that titles the story. Through "A Good Man is Hard to Find," Flannery O'Connor presents a twisted, distorted, and morally ambiguous view of life, seen primarily through the eyes of a murderer."

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