A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor “The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make them appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the blind you draw large and startling figures.
— Flannery O'Connor [From the Flannery O'Connor Special Collection, via EDSITEment reviewed Internet Public Library].
#1 Take A Moment: Paraphrase what O’Connor is suggesting in this quote.
#2 In your group, please discuss your reaction to the story. What did you think about its strange ending?
#3 How does the group respond to O’Connor’s depiction of her story as “Christian realism?” Record your answer.
#4 The Catholic church teaches that pain and suffering is one way to become closer to God. In what ways is the grandmother “closer” to God in the story’s end? Explain.
#5 Describe the grandmother using one adjective and justify that description using details from that page.
#6 The grandmother thinks that taking the Georgia-based family to east Tennessee would make them "broad" by "see[ing] different parts of the world. “Looking at how travel changed in the grandmother’s lifetime, what is O'Connor's tone here in her characterization of the grandmother? How does O'Connor's humor come through in this passage?
#7 The section that begins “Tennessee is a hillbilly dumping ground…. To the end of the page. Now, answer these questions in your worksheets. What does the grandmother mean when she says, "In my time" at the beginning of this passage? What does the grandmother's use of these words suggest about the racial views she holds? (Pickaninny is also a derogatory term) How does the grandmother represent the South's earlier times by using this word?
#8 How does O'Connor use the grandmother to distinguish between the "Old" and "New South"? What is symbolic about the fact that the "phantom" plantation is just a figment of the grandmother's bad memory? When O’Connor writes this story, historical change is a process, and radical, immediate change is rare. How does the family in O'Connor's story reflect this idea?
#9 How does the above image compare to O'Connor's descriptions of the mother and the grandmother? What does the grandmother think of the "modern woman"? What are some differences between the grandmother and the mother? Though the story is told from the grandmother's point-of-view, does the story reveal praise and/or criticism for both the mother and the grandmother? How?
#10 Flannery O'Connor once said that, "while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted" What might O'Connor mean when she says "Christ-haunted"? Why "Christ-haunted" instead of "Christ-centered"? What passages of "A Good Man is Hard to Find" support O'Connor's claim about the South?
#11 How is the grandmother, a supposedly righteous woman, un-Christian in the road scene? Contrast this with her dealings with the Misfit on pages 12. Why is this ironic? How can the Misfit and his thugs be like the devil that receive the goats in the passage?