A Good Man is Hard to Find

Close Reading

What do the details of this passage convey about the mother/father?

• Bailey didn't look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and faced the children's mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like rabbit's ears. She was sitting on the sofa, feeding the baby his apricots out of a jar.

Allusions

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Symbolism Behind the Names

Pitty Sing

• Pitti-Sing is a character in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, The Mikado. She is falsely blamed for the execution of Nanki-Poo, and is condemned to death. However, she’s able to prove her innocence at the last possible moment and is pardoned.

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• Pitti-Sing may not be a major role in The Mikado, but she is still vital to the plot.

John Wesley

• Father of the Methodists. In 1736 he travelled from England to Georgia and attempted to convert the natives. His efforts largely failed and he returned to England.

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• An American, Old-West outlaw/gunfighter. From an early age, Hardin often got himself into trouble with the law. Was killed in a saloon by a Texas constable.

June Star/Belle Star

• A notorious outlaw who associated with the James/Younger gang.

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• She was fatally shot in 1889 in a case that is still officially unsolved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Mountain#mediaviewer/File:StoneMountain.jpg�

Discuss the significance of this imagery.

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Quick Analysis:

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• She pointed out interesting details of the scenery: Stone Mountain; the blue granite that in some places came up to both sides of the highway; the brilliant red clay banks slightly streaked with purple; and the various crops that made rows of green lace-work on the ground. The trees were full of silver-white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled. The children were reading comic magazines and their mother and gone back to sleep.

The carving depicts three Confederate figures during the Civil War: Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Jefferson Davis. Stone Mountain was once owned by the Venable Brothers and was the site of the founding of the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915. It was purchased by the State of Georgia in 1958.

The Tower

The Tower

Ultimate symbol of mankind’s ignorance & arrogance.

Chinaberry Tree

• Often compared to the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden as well as a symbol for hope and strength in the deep south.

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• Berries are poisonous to people & make birds drunk.

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• Not indigenous to the area and considered invasive and destructive to native flora.

Discuss the significance of the contrast of details in this passage.

• The children's mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.

What effect does the juxtaposition of the imagery and dialogue have on this passage?�Significance of title?

• "A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Every- thing is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more."
• He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside into the white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the lacy chinaberry tree. He was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a delicacy.

What is the overall purpose of the imagery and details in this excerpt?

• They drove off again into the hot afternoon. The grandmother took cat naps and woke up every few minutes with her own snoring. Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady. She said the house had six white columns across the front and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the garden. She recalled exactly which road to turn off to get to it. She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors were still standing. "There was a secret:-panel in this house," she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were, "and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found . . ."

Memory vs. Reality

What tone is created? What details generate the tone? How does this imagery tie into O’Connor’s Themes

• Quick Analysis:

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• They turned onto the dirt road and the car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust. The grandmother recalled the times when there were no paved roads and thirty miles was a day's journey. The dirt road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous embankments. All at once they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on them…. The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months.

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What does the narrator seem to be commenting upon with this passage?

• Quick Analysis:

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• The grandmother was curled up under the dashboard, hoping she was injured so that Bailey's wrath would not come down on her all at once. The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee.

Identify the tone of this piece. What details and imagery generate this tone.

• Quick Analysis:

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• The road was about ten feet above and they could see only the tops of the trees on the other side of it. Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall and dark and deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away on top of a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them. The grandmother stood up and waved both arms dramatically to attract their attention. The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again, moving even slower, on top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black battered hearse-like automobile. There were three men in it.

What can the reader infer with the details of this passage? What’s the significance of the Misfit having a “scholarly look”?

• Quick Analysis:

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• The driver got out of the car and stood by the side of it, looking down at them. He was an older man than the other two. His hair was just beginning to gray and he wore silver-rimmed spectacles that gave him a scholarly look. He had a long creased face and didn't have on any shirt or undershirt. He had on blue jeans that were too tight for him and was holding a black hat and a gun. The two boys also had guns.

What’s the significance of the Misfit’s observation & the motif of the “cloudless sky.”

• The Misfit squatted down on the ground. "Watch them children, Bobby Lee," he said. "You know they make me nervous." He looked at the six of them huddled together in front of him and he seemed to be embarrassed as if he couldn't think of anything to say. "Ain't a cloud in the sky," he remarked, looking up at it. "Don't see no sun but don't see no cloud neither."

How does this passage tie into the beginning and end of this short story?�What commentary is being made on memory and/or nostalgia?

• Quick Analysis

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• The grandmother had the peculiar feeling that the bespectacled man was someone she knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she had known him all her life but she could not recall who he was.

What’s the symbolic significance of the imagery and details found within this piece?

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• The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going to the woods with him but it came off in her hand. She stood staring at it and after a second she let it fall on the ground. Hiram pulled Bailey up by the arm as if he were assisting an old man. John Wesley caught hold of his father's hand and Bobby Lee followed. They went off toward the woods and just as they reached the dark edge, Bailey turned and supporting himself against a gray naked pine trunk, he shouted, "I'll be back in a minute, Mamma, wait on me!"

Using both brackets and ellipsis, own this quote from Flannery O’Connor’s, A Good Man is Hard to Find. Your quote must include a closing “So What?”�

• “The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going to the woods with him but it came off in her hand. She stood staring at it and after a second she let it fall on the ground. Hiram pulled Bailey up by the arm as if he were assisting an old man. John Wesley caught hold of his father's hand and Bobby Lee followed. They went off toward the woods and just as they reached the dark edge, Bailey turned and supporting himself against a gray naked pine trunk, he shouted, "I'll be back in a minute, Mamma, wait on me!”

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• All throughout her gothic tale, A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor brazenly critiques not only the Old South, but also any individual foolish enough to wistfully pine for the “good old days.” In a subtle but equally poignant detail, “the grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim [only to have it come] off in her hand.” As a result of the grandmother’s conscious and subconscious selfishness and arrogance, the grandmother’s hold on a past dedicated to banal platitudes and derisive social structures is beginning to crumble. It is here that O’Connor wishes to not only foreshadow the grandmother’s ultimate demise, but she also wishes to illuminate the following to the reader: if one is blindly consumed with the past and glorifying its antiquated social morays, that individual will soon be confronted with a crisis that is destined shake one’s world to it’s very core, sadly missing all the harbingers along the way which were meant to admonish him/her from his/her tragic fall.

What is the significance of the Misfit’s monologue?

• "Nome, I ain't a good man," The Misfit said after a second as if he had considered her statement carefully, "but I ain't the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. 'You know,' Daddy said, 'it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!"' He put on his black hat and looked up suddenly and then away deep into the woods as if he were embarrassed again. "I'm sorry I don't have on a shirt before you ladies," he said, hunching his shoulders slightly. "We buried our clothes that we had on when we escaped and we're just making do until we can get better. We borrowed these from some folks we met," he explained.

What can the reader infer from the Misfit’s résumé?

• "I was a gospel singer for a while," The Misfit said. "I been most everything. Been in the arm service both land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet," and he looked up at the children's mother and the little girl who were sitting close together, their faces white and their eyes glassy; "I even seen a woman flogged," he said.

Can you solve the cryptic mystery of these details?

• The Misfit sneered slightly. "Nobody had nothing I wanted," he said. "It was a head-doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy but I known that for a lie. My daddy died in nineteen ought nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it. He was buried in the Mount Hopewell Baptist churchyard and you can go there and see for yourself."

Discuss how this passage ties into O’Connor’s overall theme of awareness and accountability?

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• Quick Analysis:

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• "Thow me that shirt, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. The shirt came flying at him and landed on his shoulder and he put it on. The grandmother couldn't name what the shirt reminded her of. "No, lady," The Misfit said while he was buttoning it up, "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 what it was you done and just be punished for it."

Who or What creates the “Misfits” of the world?

"Yes'm, The Misfit said as if he agreed. "Jesus thown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn't committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course," he said, "they never shown me my papers. That's why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you'll have something to prove you ain't been treated right. I call myself The Misfit," he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."

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There was a piercing scream from the woods, followed closely by a pistol report.

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"Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't punished at all?"

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How does religion or philosophy tie into the Misfit’s moral code?

• "Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.

How does this passage address the overall theme of the story?

• "I wasn't there so I can't say He didn't," The Misfit said. "I wisht I had of been there," he said, hitting the ground with his fist. "It ain't right I wasn't there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now." His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children !" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.

What is the significance of the details, imagery and dialogue at the closing of this story? How are the themes of grace and salvation addressed?

Hiram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the ditch, looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.

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Without his glasses, The Misfit's eyes were red-rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking. "Take her off and thow her where you thrown the others," he said, picking up the cat that was rubbing itself against his leg.

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"She was a talker, wasn't she?" Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel.

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"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

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"Some fun!" Bobby Lee said.

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"Shut up, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life."

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Flannery’s Foreshadowing �& Dark Humor

• "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did.”

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• 55890. The grandmother wrote this down because she thought it would be interesting to say how many miles they had been when they got back.

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• In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.

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• They passed a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island.

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Flannery’s Foreshadowing �& Dark Humor

• He didn't have a naturally sunny disposition like she did and trips made him nervous.

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• "Did you read about that criminal, The Misfit, that's escaped?" asked the grandmother.

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• Outside of Toombsboro she woke up and recalled an old plantation that she had visited in this neighborhood once when she was a young lady.

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Flannery’s Foreshadowing �& Dark Humor

• The dirt road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous embankments. All at once they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on them.

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• The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months.

​

• The road was about ten feet above and they could see only the tops of the trees on the other side of it. Behind the ditch they were sitting in there were more woods, tall and dark and deep. In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away on top of a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants were watching them…It was a big black battered hearse-like automobile.

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Flannery’s Foreshadowing �& Dark Humor

• The grandmother had the peculiar feeling that the bespectacled man was someone she knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she had known him au her life but she could not recall who he was.

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• Hiram pulled Bailey up by the arm as if he were assisting an old man.

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• My daddy died in nineteen ought nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it. He was buried in the Mount Hopewell Baptist churchyard and you can go there and see for yourself.

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• "Lady,…there never was a body that give the undertaker a tip."