Short stories go down like ice cream, but they often leave the reader with lingering sensations. What are those sensations? What do they have to do with your experience? Is "Literature" with a capital L a more effective brand of cultural meaning-making than commercials, Twitter, or the news?
Hopefully, we'll get the ball rolling on some of these questions. Featured texts describe utopian visions, bovine rebellion, freezing to death, and school shootings (among other things).
The short story ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ by Flannery O’Connor was about this family and a grandmother go on a vacation to Florida, end up crashing their car, and getting murdered by this Misfit dude. The entire story showed how selfish and annoying the grandmother was. She was all about drama and money. I think the grandmother’s idea of a good man is one that can support her financially and take care of her. The watermelon is an example of this and when she says, “…he was a gentleman and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man.” It clearly showed how no one liked her. One part that made me laugh was “But nobody’s killed, June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the car…” I though the scene when they were at Red Sam’s restaurant was interesting. It basically showed Red Sam is basically a master to his wife. He told her what to do and didn’t help her. It really made me mad, actually. A theme for this story could be selfishness. Basically the family died because the grandmother wanted to go see her house she used to live in. If she would have thought about the others they wouldn’t have crashed.
Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was very weird, and in my opinion very predictable. From the beginning when the grandmother mentioned “The Misfit” killer on the loose in Florida, I had a feeling that they would encounter him in some way. I also thought it was interesting how the grandmother was the one who didn’t want to go to Florida because of the killer in the first place, then in the end she is pretty much the one who gets them all killed. She was the one who wanted to turn down the dirt road, and got the children to bug their parents about it. I don’t think they would have gone that way if the children weren’t bugging the parents about it so badly. After they got onto the dirt road, the grandmother realized that the house she thought was at the end of that road wasn’t even in Florida, so she jerks suddenly sending her hidden cat flying onto Bailey and sending the van into a ditch. That is when “the misfit” and his crew found the family. The family probably would have been fine, not knowing that he was a killer, but then, of course, the grandmother brought up that he was the misfit, ultimately killing the entire family. The whole beginning of the story was just a foreshadow to their ultimate death.
In Flannery O’Connor’s story A Good Man Is Hard to Find I think O’Connor throughout the story is talking about how children and society has a lot less respect for their families in the past. She shows this by the attitudes of her grandchildren and also in her son. She is just trying to spend time with her family and also try to make them more respectful. From the beginning of the story it was easy for me to tell that they would end up meeting the Misfit because she talked about it multiple times. When the grandmother and the Misfit are face to face the Misfit says “I found out the crime don’t matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you’re going to forget and just be punished for it” By this I think that is sort of foreshadowing for when the grandmother finally realize that the Misfit is her son and that she is punished for what she forgot. I also think that the Misfit feels as though like Jesus he was wrongly sent punished for something he shouldn’t be punished for, like him killing his father, who actually died from the flu. This is why I believe he acts the way he does because he feels that no matter what he will be punished in the end even if he did nothing, and he might be a little crazy.
The grandmother in this story came off to me as an unlikable character. I thought it was annoying how she wanted to control the family vacation and it wasn’t even her house, it was her son’s house. Also, the way she dressed for the car ride bothered me. I didn’t understand why she needed to look so fancy for a car ride with people she sees every day. I guess it just seemed very preppy of her. “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” This quote shows how she cares about her physical appearance, and it also foreshadows the terrible accident to come. The car accident was again foreshadowed a couple paragraphs before the event occurred. “…then the next minute, they would be in a red depression…” Granny’s death is again foreshadowed while the van arrives containing her murderer. “It was a big black battered hearselike automobile.” I was confused at the end of the story. The part I had the most trouble with was interpreting the line, “She would have been a good woman,’ the Misfit said, ‘if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” He then states “It’s no real pleasure in life.” I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a confusing line or if I’m confused because of the dialect. Possibly the Misfit shoots people who he deems holy. He shot the grandmother right after she said he was her son. He also allegedly shot his father. The shooting of his father is harder to interpret because the reader doesn’t know anything about his father. But maybe he realized that the grandmother was holy or divine and shot her, or the opposite.
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" was a pretty twisted story and totally threw me for a curve ball. Because of the title I assumed that this story was going to be about a woman trying to find the "perfect man" and that was not the case what so ever. The grandmother came off hypocritical in my eyes. She stresses the fact that things were better back in her day, kids respected their elders and people were just better, more morally sound individuals through and through. This comes to a halt when she and her family run into the gang of misfits somewhere down in Tennessee. First of all, everything seems to be revolved around the grandmother..which yes, elders should be respected but this lady seems to be a little over bearing especially to her son. I believe that she is very set in her ways which is expected from an elderly person during that day in age and she is also fixated on the fact that her faith will save her at the end of the story. She prays and prays in hopes that it will save HER even though the rest of her family is dead. The grandmother even tried to convince one of the misfits the he to is a good man. What really stuck out to me is that she did not even notice that after one of the misfits had killed her son, he was wearing his shirt. This to me, portrays a sense of self absorption and her trying to reason with the misfits by kissing their butts also goes against everything she stated earlier about people and what the definition of a "good man" is. She ends up dying regardless of how strong her faith is and the misfits show no mercy because they are cold blooded killers with clearly no remorse.
The story "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" was a weird one. I agree with Shannon on the predictable part as well. In the very beginning when we are first informed about the Misfit. The grandmother was reading an article about how he had escaped from prison and stated "I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it." I feel like the author kind of gave it away that the grandmother was going to come in contact with The Misfit. I believe that the grandmother is sort of at fault for everything that happened to the family. But the grandmother annoyed me from the beginning of the story. She was very nagging. She's the one who caused the car accident, she also mentioned that she knew the man was The Misfit and I feel like this is what actually made them the victims. Had she not mentioned that she knew, they might have been able to escape unharmed. In a way, I believe this was her own punishment since she admitted that he was her son. The ending kind of confused me but that's what I got out of it.
In the story “a good man is hard to find”, before reading this I finally thought we were reading an love story.. I was wrong. This story was about an old grandma who defined and wanted her idea of a good man. The family were planning on going to florida, when the grandma was reading the story about the misfit I knew that they would end up encountering the misfits because that’s the typical synero in movies. One person knows the story of a criminal or murderer, they take a random road and then the whole group ends up encountering them later in the work. All in all I did not like the grandmother whatsoever she considers herself superior to others by virtue of her being a “lady,” and she frequently passes judgment on others. She also takes any opportunity to judge the lack of goodness in people in the world today. She thinks they lost respect for their elders. The grandmother never turns her critical eye on herself to judge her own hypocrisy, dishonesty, and selfishness. This made me annoyed during the story reading about how she nagged everyone for what she considered there flaws or bad points.
I have already read the short story ‘A Good Man is hard to Find’ so I already knew what to expect, but even still this story gives me the chills. At first when you read the title you think this is going to be some hopeless love story but in fact it’s not even close to that. When I first read this story I was getting annoyed with the grandma because of how much she seemed to be ruining this trip the family was going since she read that article in the newspaper about the “Misfit”. The kind of ironic weird fact though about her reading that newspaper article is that normally people don’t really think twice about something like that, like we think that we are going to be perfectly safe and that the police have it handled. In reality though you never know what might happen to you and you may come across a person like the misfit, just like how this family did. It is also kind of ironic how the grandmother was so skeptical about going out that way and yet she was the one that basically got them all killed! Way to go grandma, ruining the family vacation for everyone.
A good Man is Hard to Find took a twist for me I thought it would be a story about ideal masculinity again. when the grandmother read the story of the misfit killer and that they were going t the same place I knew that they would cross paths. in a society where respecting your elders is preached I think this shows how the elderly can be just as disrespectful. I think that both the misfit killer and the grandmother were similar because they both always looked at the bad in people and never the good.
The short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a story that I enjoyed reading. I found the story to be just a little confusing as I had to read a couple parts over to figure out what was really going on. This story saddened me also, when I realized that the men that drove up to the family was actually killing all of the members of the family. I wondered what the reason was that the three men had to kill this family and why they could not just take their things and leave them alone. The story is about a family and their grandmother who go on vacation and end up going down a dirt road because the grandma wants to show the others something. She soon realizes that she is in the wrong state and before its too late the car flipped and they had been in an accident. The grandmother also mentioned something of a misfit in the beginning of the story who was in the news paper. He and two other men show up and end up killing the family. When the grandmother mentioned the misfit earlier in the story, that was foreshadowing that he would end up back in the story later on. I also agree with the above comments, that the grandmother was actually selfish and that she caused all this families misfortune because of her selfishness. This story also made me think of what made consisted of a “good” man or person as the grandmothers definition of a good man changed throughout the story.
While reading A Good Man is Hard To Find, one of the things that I found interesting was the foreshadowing at the beginning of the story. It seemed fairly obvious that something bad was going to happen to the family on their trip to Florida after the grandmother was talking about the escaped prisoner heading toward there. Because of this, and how the grandmother was putting up such a fuss about going to Florida instead of Tennessee, I was pretty sure that the story wasn’t going to end well for the family. The other thing that I found interesting was the grandmother and how terrible of a person she is. She starts off the story complaining about going to Florida and not Tennessee, where her friends are, then she tries to guilt them into going to Tennessee by saying that they are bad parents for taking their children somewhere where a fugitive is heading. Then she brings her cat which ends up causing the accident on the dirt road that they are on only because she wanted to see a house that wasn’t even there. This accident, which she causes, leads them to encounter the Misfit who the grandmother recognizes, putting the rest of her family at risk. Then even when the Misfit seemingly has killed the family, she continues to beg for her life like nothing had even happened. I also found it interesting that she was the one that was worried about going to Florida because of the Misfit but she ended up being the person that caused the Misfit to find them by taking them on the dirt road to nowhere to see the house that wasn’t even in Florida, then she is the one who recognizes the Misfit, causing him to kill them. She fulfilled her own prophecy.
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, is a very interesting story. The grandmother is a pest throughout the whole story and ends up getting the whole family killed. I think her foolishness is what resulted in the family’s downfall. She was selfish and wanted everything to go her way, like a child. When she finally got her way it ended up being a disaster for the whole family. After they get into an accident she refuses to admit that she had mistaken the house they were going to for another and fails to take responsibility for her actions. Her ignorance was another thing that killed them off. If she had never alerted the Misfit that she knew who he was and all the horrible things he had done, maybe the family would still be alive. She should’ve just kept her mouth shut during the whole trip.
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” written by Flannery O’ Conner is an interesting story. The story involves a family that is going on a trip to Florida. However, the grandmother disagrees on the trip because she believes the family might run into a man that escaped the Federal Pen. The grandmother decides to go anyway and she tells the children about a house that has hidden silver. The family decides to visit the house in Georgia but they get into a car accident. After a while a car arrives with three men, in which one looks familiar to the grandmother. At this point of the story I was thinking it must be the Misfit. It seemed likely that he would be the one they run into, similar to murder movies. When a character in the movie has an accident or their car breaks down, they end up running into the killer. The killer offers to help with the accident which usually leads to killing the person who needed help. In comparison to “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the Misfit’s partners kill the husband, wife and kids. Before the grandmother is killed she continues to plead that the Misfit is not a bad person. The end of the story was the most confusing part for me. I didn't understand the message about Jesus and the idea to kill someone if Jesus did not do what he intended to do. But as I reread some parts of the story I tried to relate the title to the story. The Misfit mentioned that he has been a gospel singer, in the army, and an undertaker. He has had a life of many different roles with different expectations. So I thought the story was explaining that a man can have many roles but it doesn't determine how he acts.
The short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" was a good story. This story is about a family that is going on a trip to florida. The grandmother tries to convince them to go to a different location because she read about a man that escaped from prison and was seen around Florida. The family goes anyways and the grandmother decides to tag along. The grandmother hid her cat in a basket to bring along on the trip without anyone knowing about it. While driving the The grandmother insists that they stop at this one plantation but no one wants too. She lies and said there were underground tunnels so the kids begged to go so they went. The grandmother remembered that the plantation was in a different state but she decides to keep going until her cat jumps out causes them to crash. That is when the criminal shows up of course with two other men. They killed everyone including the grandmother. Since the beginning of the story the grandmother was only causing problems and that eventually caused everyone to die. In the beginning of the story one of the kids asked if they could leave her at home and if they did everything would be fine. This shows that the older you are doesn't mean that you're always right.
I think that this story was very interesting. The grandmother was extremely annoying and it was partly her fault that she got the family killed. She couldnt correctly remember where the tunnels were and when she did remember she didn't say anything. The car crashed becuase of her cat. When the misfit murderer showed up the grandmother pointed him out. This caused him to get flustered and angry that he was recognized. This is when he had his psychotic break and went on a killingspree. It wouldn't have happened if the grandmother knew what state the tunnels were in
I thought the story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” was very interesting. It starts off with a family going on a road trip to Florida despite the grandmothers wishes that their is a dangerous man loose. The story starts off pretty normal, the kids are playing games in the back and they stop for a bite to eat at a diner along the way. On their way their the grandmother is a total pest and eventually persuades the father to turn down this dirt path that clearly hadn’t been driven on in quite some time in order to see a “beautiful” house. The car spins off the road and they are left deserted. The grandmother remembers that this is not the road that she remembered…. Eventually 3 men come down the road in a black sedan. As the one steps out the grandmother recognizes one as “The Misfit” and the story basically turns into a horror movie. They are surrounded by men with guns and one of them takes the father into the woods. The grandmother pleas with the man that he is a “good man” and begs him not to shoot. This relates back to the title because no matter what she says, in the end, the misfit kills the whole family and nothing they say can protect them. The ending of this story was confusing and basically the grandmothers fault. It shows that wisdom does not come from age.
The short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was very interesting story. It was very easy to understand what was going on in the story. A family is going on a trip to Florida against the grandmother’s wishes. She wants to go to Tennessee. She tells her family that a criminal is in Florida, but the family decides to go anyway. The grandma not being able to stay home because she thinks she will miss something goes along. During the ride, the grandmother believes that she saw a plantation she once visited and urges her son to stop at it. As they pull into the plantation in the woods, the grandma realizes that she made a mistake because the plantation was in a different state. Everything goes downhill from there. The family gets into an accident and three men approach them with guns. The grandma realizes that one of them is The Misfit, the criminal she read about. The grandmother continuously says to the man that he is good man in order to stop him from killing them but he does not listen. The men are killed first, then the women, and the grandmother last. If the grandmother listened to her grandchildren in the beginning, none of this would have ever occurred. The ending relates to the title because the grandmother tells the man he is a good man but he does not listen which shows that a good man is hard to find.
The short story " A Good Man is Hard to Find" was not a short story that i really enjoyed. The old lady, while she was kind of annoying, seemed to be the only with manners- yet, ironically, she is the person that leads the family to their death. Her son, Bailey, is really a jerk who needs to step off his high horse and stop being so negative all the time. While i read the section between the grandmother and the misfit, i hoped that besides the title, he would not kill the women at least. I understood the necessity of Bailey's death but not anyone else's. When he speaks of God i think he feels cheated. He was convicted for something that was never really proven to him, his childhood seemed difficult, and he takes no responsibility for being who he is- instead he blames the circumstances under which he grew up for who he is.
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is about a family going on vacation from Georgia Florida. Everyone is excited to go except the grandmother, who really wanted to go to eastern Tennessee. Despite her trying to convince her son to go to Tennessee, the family continues to Florida. On the way, the grandmother sits on the back with her two young grandchildren, telling them various stories about what they're passing and what everything is. It would've been better for the family to have gone to Tennessee because they wouldn't have encountered The Misfit, the criminal that the grandmother warned everyone about in Florida. However, it really is the grandmother's fault that the family is killed, because she told her son to stop at a plantation that she thought she had visited before. She was mistaken, and armed men came out to greet them, one of them being The Misfit. Although the grandmother is telling him that he is a good man, The Misfit doesn't listen and proceeds to kill the family, starting with the women and ending with the grandmother. All in all, I think the story was worth it and a fitting last short story for the semester.
The short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor was a good story. The title made me think that this was going to be about a relationship of some sort, but as the story progressed, this was clearly not the case. The family was set on moving from Georgia to Florida but the grandmother wanted so desperately to go to Tennessee. The children said that if she didn't want to go to Florida then she could just stay at home and cause less problems for everybody. I found the way in which the children acted to be odd since I felt like this story was set back in time (maybe in the era at the end of slavery) and children of this time aren't expected behave or act in such a manner to their elders. As they drove she told the children of a plantation that had a secret panel and the children got excited and convinced their father to go there. On the way there, the grandmother realized this plantation was in Tennessee and then the grandmother's cat ended up getting startled and jumped at the father causing him to get into an accident. A car drove up to them and the family thought they were going to be getting help until the grandmother realized that this man was the criminal who had recently escaped from jail. She tried convincing him that he was a good man and that if he prayed, Jesus would be able to help him, but this was no use. The father and son were taken into the woods and shot, and then the mother, daughter, and the baby were taken next. The grandmother told him that he was one of her own children and this startled the man and he shot her three times through the chest. This story shows that just because you want to believe someone is good it doesn't make it so. A good man is hard to find because they are stubborn and won't believe what he is told even if it may be true. This story also shows that just because someone is older, it doesn't make them wiser.
The short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" written by Flannery O' Connor, is a story that answers the name that it is given. In this short story a family decides to go on a vacation to florida. The grandmother is extremely skeptical about taking the trip but she decided to go anyways as long as she can bring her cat. While the family is on their way to Florida, the grandmother suggests that they stop in Georgia to explore a house that has treasures in it. In order to get to this house they must take a back road, while on this back road, the family gets into an accident and the car flips over and they are in need of help. Luckily three men show up to help out the family, well at least they believe. The leader of this group of men, the grandmother noticed to be the man who was just set loose from jail. The mans followers takes the husband, wife, and children out into the forest and kills the family, and the leader kills the grandmother. Ironically the leader who orchestrated all these killings was a gospel singer, he was in the army, and he was an undertaker, all of these are great qualities that could define a good man, all except for the fact that he is a killer. This scene in the story shows how a good man is hard to come by, it shows how not every man is perfect and how many people do have flaws. Even though this is a very drastic flaw and he is obviously a horrible man, there are also many other traits that can make a good man, a bad person.
The short story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” by Flannery O'Connor was quite predictable for me. Just by reading the first paragraph It foreshadowed that something bad was going to happen later on. Right away I know that the grandmother would be the one to blame because she's so stubborn and hard-headed as well as her son and the children in fact. She tries to convince her son(Bailey) -that's headed to Florida to go to Tennessee instead. She tries to really manipulate him by telling him that a federal criminal called The Mistif has escaped and will be headed toward the Florida area. Little does she know that that's who they are confronted with when she and the kids finally change his mind to visit a house on a plantation that she's familiar with in Georgia. They take an alternate route and end up in a car accident. In need of help they spot three men, thinking that they are saved the grandmother soon comes to realize that the one man was The Mistif that escaped from prison. Right from there things quickly start to go bad. She tries to convince him that he doesn't have to do this, that he's still a good man, Jesus would forgive him, but it all failed. He ended up killing them all ending with the grandmother who ironically started it all. No matter how much she pleaded and thought that she could possibly convince him or believe in her mind that he would end up doing the right good thing, he didn't. The title couldn't be more of a perfect match.
“A good man is hard to find” it started with a family on a road trip on their way to Georgia for a vacation , unfortunately for them the was their last trip together , they encounter a tragedy and die and they not able to return back home , what stands out to me was a very interesting story . what stands out to me about this story was the grandmother , I have always known grandmothers to be this sweet, caring and they always seem to know better. But this particular grandmother is pretty different . she initially wanted them to take the trip to Georgia instead. She kind of warn them before they all get murdered. She tries to persuade the man by reminding him “he was a good man” This story a little confusing because the story don’t match the title to my perspective . I was expecting it to end a little different from what it did.
The short story ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ by Flannery O’Connor was about this family and a grandmother go on a vacation to Florida, end up crashing their car, and getting murdered by this Misfit dude. The entire story showed how selfish and annoying the grandmother was. She was all about drama and money. I think the grandmother’s idea of a good man is one that can support her financially and take care of her. The watermelon is an example of this and when she says, “…he was a gentleman and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man.” It clearly showed how no one liked her. One part that made me laugh was “But nobody’s killed, June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the car…” I though the scene when they were at Red Sam’s restaurant was interesting. It basically showed Red Sam is basically a master to his wife. He told her what to do and didn’t help her. It really made me mad, actually. A theme for this story could be selfishness. Basically the family died because the grandmother wanted to go see her house she used to live in. If she would have thought about the others they wouldn’t have crashed.
ReplyDeleteFlannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was very weird, and in my opinion very predictable. From the beginning when the grandmother mentioned “The Misfit” killer on the loose in Florida, I had a feeling that they would encounter him in some way. I also thought it was interesting how the grandmother was the one who didn’t want to go to Florida because of the killer in the first place, then in the end she is pretty much the one who gets them all killed. She was the one who wanted to turn down the dirt road, and got the children to bug their parents about it. I don’t think they would have gone that way if the children weren’t bugging the parents about it so badly. After they got onto the dirt road, the grandmother realized that the house she thought was at the end of that road wasn’t even in Florida, so she jerks suddenly sending her hidden cat flying onto Bailey and sending the van into a ditch. That is when “the misfit” and his crew found the family. The family probably would have been fine, not knowing that he was a killer, but then, of course, the grandmother brought up that he was the misfit, ultimately killing the entire family. The whole beginning of the story was just a foreshadow to their ultimate death.
ReplyDeleteIn Flannery O’Connor’s story A Good Man Is Hard to Find I think O’Connor throughout the story is talking about how children and society has a lot less respect for their families in the past. She shows this by the attitudes of her grandchildren and also in her son. She is just trying to spend time with her family and also try to make them more respectful. From the beginning of the story it was easy for me to tell that they would end up meeting the Misfit because she talked about it multiple times. When the grandmother and the Misfit are face to face the Misfit says “I found out the crime don’t matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you’re going to forget and just be punished for it” By this I think that is sort of foreshadowing for when the grandmother finally realize that the Misfit is her son and that she is punished for what she forgot. I also think that the Misfit feels as though like Jesus he was wrongly sent punished for something he shouldn’t be punished for, like him killing his father, who actually died from the flu. This is why I believe he acts the way he does because he feels that no matter what he will be punished in the end even if he did nothing, and he might be a little crazy.
ReplyDeleteThe grandmother in this story came off to me as an unlikable character. I thought it was annoying how she wanted to control the family vacation and it wasn’t even her house, it was her son’s house. Also, the way she dressed for the car ride bothered me. I didn’t understand why she needed to look so fancy for a car ride with people she sees every day. I guess it just seemed very preppy of her. “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” This quote shows how she cares about her physical appearance, and it
ReplyDeletealso foreshadows the terrible accident to come. The car accident was again foreshadowed a couple paragraphs before the event occurred. “…then the next minute, they would be in a red depression…” Granny’s death is again foreshadowed while the van arrives containing her murderer. “It was a big black battered hearselike automobile.”
I was confused at the end of the story. The part I had the most trouble with was interpreting the line, “She would have been a good woman,’ the Misfit said, ‘if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” He then states “It’s no real pleasure in life.” I’m not sure if this is supposed to be a confusing line or if I’m confused because of the dialect. Possibly the Misfit shoots people who he deems holy. He shot the grandmother right after she said he was her son. He also allegedly shot his father. The shooting of his father is harder to interpret because the reader doesn’t know anything about his father. But maybe he realized that the grandmother was holy or divine and shot her, or the opposite.
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" was a pretty twisted story and totally threw me for a curve ball. Because of the title I assumed that this story was going to be about a woman trying to find the "perfect man" and that was not the case what so ever. The grandmother came off hypocritical in my eyes. She stresses the fact that things were better back in her day, kids respected their elders and people were just better, more morally sound individuals through and through. This comes to a halt when she and her family run into the gang of misfits somewhere down in Tennessee. First of all, everything seems to be revolved around the grandmother..which yes, elders should be respected but this lady seems to be a little over bearing especially to her son. I believe that she is very set in her ways which is expected from an elderly person during that day in age and she is also fixated on the fact that her faith will save her at the end of the story. She prays and prays in hopes that it will save HER even though the rest of her family is dead. The grandmother even tried to convince one of the misfits the he to is a good man. What really stuck out to me is that she did not even notice that after one of the misfits had killed her son, he was wearing his shirt. This to me, portrays a sense of self absorption and her trying to reason with the misfits by kissing their butts also goes against everything she stated earlier about people and what the definition of a "good man" is. She ends up dying regardless of how strong her faith is and the misfits show no mercy because they are cold blooded killers with clearly no remorse.
ReplyDeleteThe story "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" was a weird one. I agree with Shannon on the predictable part as well. In the very beginning when we are first informed about the Misfit. The grandmother was reading an article about how he had escaped from prison and stated "I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it." I feel like the author kind of gave it away that the grandmother was going to come in contact with The Misfit. I believe that the grandmother is sort of at fault for everything that happened to the family. But the grandmother annoyed me from the beginning of the story. She was very nagging. She's the one who caused the car accident, she also mentioned that she knew the man was The Misfit and I feel like this is what actually made them the victims. Had she not mentioned that she knew, they might have been able to escape unharmed. In a way, I believe this was her own punishment since she admitted that he was her son. The ending kind of confused me but that's what I got out of it.
ReplyDeleteIn the story “a good man is hard to find”, before reading this I finally thought we were reading an love story.. I was wrong. This story was about an old grandma who defined and wanted her idea of a good man. The family were planning on going to florida, when the grandma was reading the story about the misfit I knew that they would end up encountering the misfits because that’s the typical synero in movies. One person knows the story of a criminal or murderer, they take a random road and then the whole group ends up encountering them later in the work. All in all I did not like the grandmother whatsoever she considers herself superior to others by virtue of her being a “lady,” and she frequently passes judgment on others. She also takes any opportunity to judge the lack of goodness in people in the world today. She thinks they lost respect for their elders. The grandmother never turns her critical eye on herself to judge her own hypocrisy, dishonesty, and selfishness. This made me annoyed during the story reading about how she nagged everyone for what she considered there flaws or bad points.
ReplyDeleteI have already read the short story ‘A Good Man is hard to Find’ so I already knew what to expect, but even still this story gives me the chills. At first when you read the title you think this is going to be some hopeless love story but in fact it’s not even close to that. When I first read this story I was getting annoyed with the grandma because of how much she seemed to be ruining this trip the family was going since she read that article in the newspaper about the “Misfit”. The kind of ironic weird fact though about her reading that newspaper article is that normally people don’t really think twice about something like that, like we think that we are going to be perfectly safe and that the police have it handled. In reality though you never know what might happen to you and you may come across a person like the misfit, just like how this family did. It is also kind of ironic how the grandmother was so skeptical about going out that way and yet she was the one that basically got them all killed! Way to go grandma, ruining the family vacation for everyone.
ReplyDeleteA good Man is Hard to Find took a twist for me I thought it would be a story about ideal masculinity again. when the grandmother read the story of the misfit killer and that they were going t the same place I knew that they would cross paths. in a society where respecting your elders is preached I think this shows how the elderly can be just as disrespectful. I think that both the misfit killer and the grandmother were similar because they both always looked at the bad in people and never the good.
ReplyDeleteThe short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a story that I enjoyed reading. I found the story to be just a little confusing as I had to read a couple parts over to figure out what was really going on. This story saddened me also, when I realized that the men that drove up to the family was actually killing all of the members of the family. I wondered what the reason was that the three men had to kill this family and why they could not just take their things and leave them alone. The story is about a family and their grandmother who go on vacation and end up going down a dirt road because the grandma wants to show the others something. She soon realizes that she is in the wrong state and before its too late the car flipped and they had been in an accident. The grandmother also mentioned something of a misfit in the beginning of the story who was in the news paper. He and two other men show up and end up killing the family. When the grandmother mentioned the misfit earlier in the story, that was foreshadowing that he would end up back in the story later on. I also agree with the above comments, that the grandmother was actually selfish and that she caused all this families misfortune because of her selfishness. This story also made me think of what made consisted of a “good” man or person as the grandmothers definition of a good man changed throughout the story.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading A Good Man is Hard To Find, one of the things that I found interesting was the foreshadowing at the beginning of the story. It seemed fairly obvious that something bad was going to happen to the family on their trip to Florida after the grandmother was talking about the escaped prisoner heading toward there. Because of this, and how the grandmother was putting up such a fuss about going to Florida instead of Tennessee, I was pretty sure that the story wasn’t going to end well for the family. The other thing that I found interesting was the grandmother and how terrible of a person she is. She starts off the story complaining about going to Florida and not Tennessee, where her friends are, then she tries to guilt them into going to Tennessee by saying that they are bad parents for taking their children somewhere where a fugitive is heading. Then she brings her cat which ends up causing the accident on the dirt road that they are on only because she wanted to see a house that wasn’t even there. This accident, which she causes, leads them to encounter the Misfit who the grandmother recognizes, putting the rest of her family at risk. Then even when the Misfit seemingly has killed the family, she continues to beg for her life like nothing had even happened. I also found it interesting that she was the one that was worried about going to Florida because of the Misfit but she ended up being the person that caused the Misfit to find them by taking them on the dirt road to nowhere to see the house that wasn’t even in Florida, then she is the one who recognizes the Misfit, causing him to kill them. She fulfilled her own prophecy.
ReplyDelete“A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, is a very interesting story. The grandmother is a pest throughout the whole story and ends up getting the whole family killed. I think her foolishness is what resulted in the family’s downfall. She was selfish and wanted everything to go her way, like a child. When she finally got her way it ended up being a disaster for the whole family. After they get into an accident she refuses to admit that she had mistaken the house they were going to for another and fails to take responsibility for her actions. Her ignorance was another thing that killed them off. If she had never alerted the Misfit that she knew who he was and all the horrible things he had done, maybe the family would still be alive. She should’ve just kept her mouth shut during the whole trip.
ReplyDelete“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” written by Flannery O’ Conner is an interesting story. The story involves a family that is going on a trip to Florida. However, the grandmother disagrees on the trip because she believes the family might run into a man that escaped the Federal Pen. The grandmother decides to go anyway and she tells the children about a house that has hidden silver. The family decides to visit the house in Georgia but they get into a car accident. After a while a car arrives with three men, in which one looks familiar to the grandmother. At this point of the story I was thinking it must be the Misfit. It seemed likely that he would be the one they run into, similar to murder movies. When a character in the movie has an accident or their car breaks down, they end up running into the killer. The killer offers to help with the accident which usually leads to killing the person who needed help. In comparison to “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the Misfit’s partners kill the husband, wife and kids. Before the grandmother is killed she continues to plead that the Misfit is not a bad person. The end of the story was the most confusing part for me. I didn't understand the message about Jesus and the idea to kill someone if Jesus did not do what he intended to do. But as I reread some parts of the story I tried to relate the title to the story. The Misfit mentioned that he has been a gospel singer, in the army, and an undertaker. He has had a life of many different roles with different expectations. So I thought the story was explaining that a man can have many roles but it doesn't determine how he acts.
ReplyDeleteThe short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" was a good story. This story is about a family that is going on a trip to florida. The grandmother tries to convince them to go to a different location because she read about a man that escaped from prison and was seen around Florida. The family goes anyways and the grandmother decides to tag along. The grandmother hid her cat in a basket to bring along on the trip without anyone knowing about it. While driving the The grandmother insists that they stop at this one plantation but no one wants too. She lies and said there were underground tunnels so the kids begged to go so they went. The grandmother remembered that the plantation was in a different state but she decides to keep going until her cat jumps out causes them to crash. That is when the criminal shows up of course with two other men. They killed everyone including the grandmother. Since the beginning of the story the grandmother was only causing problems and that eventually caused everyone to die. In the beginning of the story one of the kids asked if they could leave her at home and if they did everything would be fine. This shows that the older you are doesn't mean that you're always right.
ReplyDeleteI think that this story was very interesting. The grandmother was extremely annoying and it was partly her fault that she got the family killed. She couldnt correctly remember where the tunnels were and when she did remember she didn't say anything. The car crashed becuase of her cat. When the misfit murderer showed up the grandmother pointed him out. This caused him to get flustered and angry that he was recognized. This is when he had his psychotic break and went on a killingspree. It wouldn't have happened if the grandmother knew what state the tunnels were in
ReplyDeleteI thought the story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” was very interesting. It starts off with a family going on a road trip to Florida despite the grandmothers wishes that their is a dangerous man loose. The story starts off pretty normal, the kids are playing games in the back and they stop for a bite to eat at a diner along the way. On their way their the grandmother is a total pest and eventually persuades the father to turn down this dirt path that clearly hadn’t been driven on in quite some time in order to see a “beautiful” house. The car spins off the road and they are left deserted. The grandmother remembers that this is not the road that she remembered…. Eventually 3 men come down the road in a black sedan. As the one steps out the grandmother recognizes one as “The Misfit” and the story basically turns into a horror movie. They are surrounded by men with guns and one of them takes the father into the woods. The grandmother pleas with the man that he is a “good man” and begs him not to shoot. This relates back to the title because no matter what she says, in the end, the misfit kills the whole family and nothing they say can protect them. The ending of this story was confusing and basically the grandmothers fault. It shows that wisdom does not come from age.
ReplyDeleteThe short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was very interesting story. It was very easy to understand what was going on in the story. A family is going on a trip to Florida against the grandmother’s wishes. She wants to go to Tennessee. She tells her family that a criminal is in Florida, but the family decides to go anyway. The grandma not being able to stay home because she thinks she will miss something goes along. During the ride, the grandmother believes that she saw a plantation she once visited and urges her son to stop at it. As they pull into the plantation in the woods, the grandma realizes that she made a mistake because the plantation was in a different state. Everything goes downhill from there. The family gets into an accident and three men approach them with guns. The grandma realizes that one of them is The Misfit, the criminal she read about. The grandmother continuously says to the man that he is good man in order to stop him from killing them but he does not listen. The men are killed first, then the women, and the grandmother last. If the grandmother listened to her grandchildren in the beginning, none of this would have ever occurred. The ending relates to the title because the grandmother tells the man he is a good man but he does not listen which shows that a good man is hard to find.
ReplyDeleteThe short story " A Good Man is Hard to Find" was not a short story that i really enjoyed. The old lady, while she was kind of annoying, seemed to be the only with manners- yet, ironically, she is the person that leads the family to their death. Her son, Bailey, is really a jerk who needs to step off his high horse and stop being so negative all the time. While i read the section between the grandmother and the misfit, i hoped that besides the title, he would not kill the women at least. I understood the necessity of Bailey's death but not anyone else's. When he speaks of God i think he feels cheated. He was convicted for something that was never really proven to him, his childhood seemed difficult, and he takes no responsibility for being who he is- instead he blames the circumstances under which he grew up for who he is.
ReplyDelete"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is about a family going on vacation from Georgia Florida. Everyone is excited to go except the grandmother, who really wanted to go to eastern Tennessee. Despite her trying to convince her son to go to Tennessee, the family continues to Florida. On the way, the grandmother sits on the back with her two young grandchildren, telling them various stories about what they're passing and what everything is. It would've been better for the family to have gone to Tennessee because they wouldn't have encountered The Misfit, the criminal that the grandmother warned everyone about in Florida. However, it really is the grandmother's fault that the family is killed, because she told her son to stop at a plantation that she thought she had visited before. She was mistaken, and armed men came out to greet them, one of them being The Misfit. Although the grandmother is telling him that he is a good man, The Misfit doesn't listen and proceeds to kill the family, starting with the women and ending with the grandmother. All in all, I think the story was worth it and a fitting last short story for the semester.
ReplyDeleteThe short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor was a good story. The title made me think that this was going to be about a relationship of some sort, but as the story progressed, this was clearly not the case. The family was set on moving from Georgia to Florida but the grandmother wanted so desperately to go to Tennessee. The children said that if she didn't want to go to Florida then she could just stay at home and cause less problems for everybody. I found the way in which the children acted to be odd since I felt like this story was set back in time (maybe in the era at the end of slavery) and children of this time aren't expected behave or act in such a manner to their elders. As they drove she told the children of a plantation that had a secret panel and the children got excited and convinced their father to go there. On the way there, the grandmother realized this plantation was in Tennessee and then the grandmother's cat ended up getting startled and jumped at the father causing him to get into an accident. A car drove up to them and the family thought they were going to be getting help until the grandmother realized that this man was the criminal who had recently escaped from jail. She tried convincing him that he was a good man and that if he prayed, Jesus would be able to help him, but this was no use. The father and son were taken into the woods and shot, and then the mother, daughter, and the baby were taken next. The grandmother told him that he was one of her own children and this startled the man and he shot her three times through the chest. This story shows that just because you want to believe someone is good it doesn't make it so. A good man is hard to find because they are stubborn and won't believe what he is told even if it may be true. This story also shows that just because someone is older, it doesn't make them wiser.
ReplyDeleteThe short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" written by Flannery O' Connor, is a story that answers the name that it is given. In this short story a family decides to go on a vacation to florida. The grandmother is extremely skeptical about taking the trip but she decided to go anyways as long as she can bring her cat. While the family is on their way to Florida, the grandmother suggests that they stop in Georgia to explore a house that has treasures in it. In order to get to this house they must take a back road, while on this back road, the family gets into an accident and the car flips over and they are in need of help. Luckily three men show up to help out the family, well at least they believe. The leader of this group of men, the grandmother noticed to be the man who was just set loose from jail. The mans followers takes the husband, wife, and children out into the forest and kills the family, and the leader kills the grandmother. Ironically the leader who orchestrated all these killings was a gospel singer, he was in the army, and he was an undertaker, all of these are great qualities that could define a good man, all except for the fact that he is a killer. This scene in the story shows how a good man is hard to come by, it shows how not every man is perfect and how many people do have flaws. Even though this is a very drastic flaw and he is obviously a horrible man, there are also many other traits that can make a good man, a bad person.
ReplyDeleteThe short story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” by Flannery O'Connor was quite predictable for me. Just by reading the first paragraph It foreshadowed that something bad was going to happen later on. Right away I know that the grandmother would be the one to blame because she's so stubborn and hard-headed as well as her son and the children in fact. She tries to convince her son(Bailey) -that's headed to Florida to go to Tennessee instead. She tries to really manipulate him by telling him that a federal criminal called The Mistif has escaped and will be headed toward the Florida area. Little does she know that that's who they are confronted with when she and the kids finally change his mind to visit a house on a plantation that she's familiar with in Georgia. They take an alternate route and end up in a car accident. In need of help they spot three men, thinking that they are saved the grandmother soon comes to realize that the one man was The Mistif that escaped from prison. Right from there things quickly start to go bad. She tries to convince him that he doesn't have to do this, that he's still a good man, Jesus would forgive him, but it all failed. He ended up killing them all ending with the grandmother who ironically started it all. No matter how much she pleaded and thought that she could possibly convince him or believe in her mind that he would end up doing the right good thing, he didn't. The title couldn't be more of a perfect match.
ReplyDelete“A good man is hard to find” it started with a family on a road trip on their way to Georgia for a vacation , unfortunately for them the was their last trip together , they encounter a tragedy and die and they not able to return back home , what stands out to me was a very interesting story . what stands out to me about this story was the grandmother , I have always known grandmothers to be this sweet, caring and they always seem to know better. But this particular grandmother is pretty different . she initially wanted them to take the trip to Georgia instead. She kind of warn them before they all get murdered. She tries to persuade the man by reminding him “he was a good man” This story a little confusing because the story don’t match the title to my perspective . I was expecting it to end a little different from what it did.
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