Written By: Evan

               

For homework tonight we were told to read A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor. Upon hearing the title I initially assumed that it would be a story about a woman who is either searching for a husband or dealing with an abusive or possibly emotionally detached husband. I incorrectly thought that it would be a mostly innocent story, if a little sad with it possibly ended in divorce or a breakup. But no, the story went in a completely different direction than expected, with the “Good Man” in the title being someone that is not a criminal, a liar, or a cheat.

 

                While the grandmother was in no way the narrator of the story, I came to see her in a similar light, as she was the most active presence in the story. She had thoughts about everything that occurred and didn’t mind making her opinion know. She also seemed to be the sort that was raised with extremely good manners and liked to see others use them as well. All that being said, I was horrified by what occurred with “The Misfit” and how the family that was involved was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think it affected even more because I was going into it with such innocent assumptions as to what the story would contain.

                It’s usually sad to see anyone die in a story (unless of course it is the antagonist and even then it’s not always so black and white) but seeing the children die is even worse. Especially considering the innocent way they had been acting for the entire story. There is a lot of shock value in this story due innocence being met with cold cruelty. This terrible events never would have happened if the grandmother hadn’t tried to go the house, or if she had remembered correctly where the house was actually located at, or if she hadn’t brought the cat along. I also thought that the fact that the husband and son were clearly just murdered, the wife did not seem to realize this and she just went along with the goons (is that politically correct? Should we call them Henchmen? Henchpeople?) when it was time for her and the daughter to die.

                All in all, this story was very sad and very horrifying just because of the unexpected events and the way the innocence of all the characters meets as abrupt an end as the characters themselves do. We can read or watch all sorts of stories where terrible things happen to people without batting an eye, which is why there are so many different variations on CSI and CSI-like shows. But we go into those stories expecting bad things to happen, but in this story our intentions are not met and therefore, we are horrified.