Skip to main content

Setting of "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery 'O Connor

[Like many of Flannery O' Connor's works, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" takes place in the deep southern United States, specifically on a road trip between Georgia and Florida, and in fact, the setting provides several integral parts and ideas to the story.] This is most notably Grandmother's realization that the "house with a secret panel" was in Tennessee and not in Georgia, and because the family was attempting to visit the house due to the screaming demands of the children, grandma is shocked by this, resulting in her kicking her feet and frightening Pitty Sing, the family's cat -

 " 'It's not much farther,' the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder. The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat. The car turned over once and landed right-side-up in a gulch off the side of the road. Bailey remained in the driver's seat with the cat-gray-striped with a broad white face and an orange nose-clinging to his neck like a caterpillar.," 

 - which causes the father, Bailey, to lose control of the car and flip over twice. After this ordeal, O'Connor uses the scenery of the ditch near the crash site as well as the cloudless sky to set up a dramatic moment ("There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun. There was nothing around her but woods."), which of course results in the Misfit and his gang pulling-up in a black hearse and eventually murdering the family, creating a very disturbing and jarring ending to the story.

Comments

  1. Cole BargerDecember 15, 2017 at 8:50 AM

    I agree that the writing O'Connor used made the crash scene much more dramatic. Do you think the setting being in the deep south has any connection to the story?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ren ShimadaDecember 15, 2017 at 11:33 AM

    I chose to look at the setting too but looked more at the cultural aspect of the south but I agree with you about the author's use of the setting to create this weird disturbing story. The setting and story both give off a weird creepy vibe.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Use of Formulaic Language in the Odyssey

Because the Odyssey  was written circa. 800 B.C.E, it obviously wasn't meant to be read by a bunch of high-schoolers at a Montessori school in 2016 Houston, Texas. It, gathered from research by linguists, archaeologists, and historians, was almost certainly meant to be performed. I don't think anybody has mentioned that only the major or supporting characters in the Odyssey are given epithets (ie. "Owl-eyed Athena, godly Nestor, Red-haired Menelaus "), and there is quite a lot of supporting characters for a relatively short epic compared to the length of fantasy & epic literature today. Because of this, these epithets were not only used for rhythm and splendor when performing. In fact, some were likely put there to remind the audience members of characters that haven't been seen in a while. However, for the characters like Zeus, Poseidon, and Athena who appear often, the performance explanation seems to be the greatest. However, another possible reason is ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sound Devices in "We Real Cool"

THE POOL PLAYERS. SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL. We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon. We Real Cool" is a great piece of literature. It doesn't take more than fifteen seconds to read, and yet I found it to be one of the most interesting poems I have come across, not only for its surprisingly deep meaning, but also for it's enjoyable and catchy use of sound devices. Some uses of sound devices in the poem are obvious. For example, the two sentences in each stanza (not counting the use of enjambment with the word "we", which, by the way, is an interesting visual choice) produce a couplet, as they rhyme. However, looking deeper into the poem, we start to see more hidden devices, such as the consecutive rhyme "we thin gin" and the fact that on the first and second lines of the second and and the first line of the fourth stanza, al...
Post a Comment
Read more

How Were Frederick Douglass's Human Rights Violated?

A human right is any such right that is guaranteed to each and every human regardless of creed, class, color, race, gender, or sexuality upon birth. However, to say that because every human is guaranteed these rights that these rights are untouched is a falsity. Today, human rights are constantly violated every day, and it was no different in Douglass's time. In Chapter 10, on page 35 of the novel, Douglass describes how we was sent by his then-master, Mr. Covey, to gather a load of wood using a wooden cart and two oxen. Covey tells Douglass to hold on tight when the oxen begin running. In no fault of his own, Douglass is dragged at an immense speed by the oxen, who crash the cart into rocks and trees. When Mr. Covey learns of this, Douglass is then brutally whipped, even though he had no prior experience with oxen and this particular exercise. Beyond slavery itself violating an essential human right, Douglass describes the numerous times when he is beaten, occasionally to life-t...
Post a Comment
Read more