Introduction
A Good Man is Hard to Find was a short story written by Flannery O’Connor with another stories collection in 1985. The story commences with an argument between Bailey and her mother about whether the trip needs to be in Tennessee or Florida. The journey entails Bailey’s children, wife, and grandmother. The grandmother reveals Misfit’s getaway towards Florida; hence, posing a threat to people. The essay examines the reasoning behind O’Connor’s choice of disabilities in the story A Good Man is Hard to Find and describes one main character’s deformity.
The Reasoning behind O’Connor’s Choice of Disabilities
Disability in the work of O’Connor is often considered to symbolize the moral failure of her disabled characters. Disability is portrayed as a way of communicating uncorrupted reality or as an attempt to critique cultural missteps (Deitermann 8). Further, she has revealed disability stereotypes by exploring deformed characters with an array of physical deformities and cultures related to those characters.
In the Good Country People, short story, Hulga has more depth than her disability; nevertheless, the short story stresses that she did not overcome her disability. Hence, Hulga is a character who is unashamed of her deformity as depicted in her statement “Here I am, take me as I am” (Eder 271). However, the society surrounding her is perturbed and uncomfortable by her missing leg. Even one character says, “She could walk without malcing the awful noise… but she made it… because it was ugly-sounding “(Eder 275). Her missing leg and heart condition have defined Hulga forcing her to remain close to home and seek refuge from the world, giving up on religion and devoting herself to studying philosophy and books.
Furthermore, her disability and disease have transformed her identity to one that is cynical of happiness in the world and otherwise perceives ugliness. In the story, the disease serves the role of making her persistently aware of her death. Despite being not perfectly moral, she is more definitely concerned with living a moral life and perceiving things than her convention-obsessed and insulated mother is (Eder 283). The author creates it clear that the qualities emanate from her disability and disease. Hence, O’Connor uses the disability and disease of Hulga to reveal how true hardship and an awareness of one’s death may change people.
Similarly, in the Life You Save May Be Your Own, short story, Lucynell is mute, deaf, and has psychological disabilities, although she can do work around the farm such as feeding the chickens and sweeping. The characters in this story reveal people with various forms of disabilities, either mental or physical disability. Each character has displayed deformities that make them alienated from society and make them lose some important things in the future. Lucynell’s physical disability stresses her innocence as compared to other characters in this short story. Mr. Shiftlet walks on both the ways of damnation and salvation (Deitermann 34). O’Connor uses disabilities in The Life You Save May Be Your Own, to demonstrate the spiritual struggles between evil and good that people experience in life.
However, in the short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, O’Connor illustrates the transformative influence of human compassion and grace. The transformations of two disabled character stereotypes, entrenched by the Misfit and the grandmother convey the message. The story portrays how humans always fail to accurately conceive what true kindness is using disabled characters. In addition, the short story reveals that despite a person’s best efforts to be just and morally upright, the outcome is always a lack of acknowledgment of differing views and self-righteousness (Eder 7). By permitting the stereotypes to develop into round characters with the potential to transform, the writer shows that anybody may reform through grace.
Grandmother
An annoying lady who resides with Bailey and his family. She considers herself morally upright to others in the sense of her being a woman and often and freely passes judgment on other people (Eder 2). She asserts that her conscience is the guiding force in her life, for example, when she tells Bailey that her conscience would not permit her to take the children in the same direction as the Misfit. The grandmother criticizes the children’s mother for not traveling to a place that could permit her children to be abroad and compares her to the cabbage (Eder 1). In addition, she reprimands John Wesley for lack of respect for his home state, Georgia. Further, she takes any chance of judging the lack of goodness in the modern world’s people. She arrogantly wears her charily chosen dress and hat, and importantly that being a woman is a virtue that she has.
Nevertheless, before, she is murdered; the grandmother remembers that the house is in Tennessee and not even, near where she claimed it was. When the grandmother faces death she now discovers where to have gone wrong in her life. Instead of behaving as a superior, she now realizes that she has flawed as everybody else (Deitermann 6). Grandmother notices that she and the Misfit are similar as they are both sinners and requires grace.
Conclusion
O’Connor’s work conveys empathy with different disabled characters as shown in A Good Man is Hard to Find in which a self-centered and stubborn grandmother guides the family trip to the unforeseen homicide. The writer has used disabled characters such as the Misfit and grandmother to illustrate the discrepancies between evil and good, salvation and violence in the story. Her portrayal of disability was more than either complaint or catechism; she neither insisted the suffering have read-made optimistic side through grace.
Work Cited
Deitermann, Julia. Flannery O’Connors Kurzgeschichten – “A good man is hard to find” und “The life you save may be your own”. 3rd ed., GRIN Verlag, 2006.
Eder, Katharina. Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find – an Analysis. GRIN Verlag, 2011.