DB Questions Week 5

A Good Man is Hard to Find

2. Do you think the grotesque elements present in either or both stories makes the characters more or less sympathetic? Do you find them alienating, or do they help render the characters more fully human and understandable?

In "A Good Man is Hard to Find", the reader often recognizes the obvious, and depending on their perspective, background, upbringing, etc. can see the difference between right and wrong. However, this piece presents grotesque elements such as the violent act of murder as a means of acceptance and understanding of the world. In my opinion, the grandmother is the person I am least sympathetic towards. Up until the last moments of her life, she is selfish, condescending, and unforgiving. She presents herself as a woman of grace, faith, and poise, when in reality, she acts and reacts in a completely different light. The Misfit, he readily accepts the world, with its violence and fear, and takes it for what it is. I am NOT saying that murder is justifiable in a situation. However, the Misfit presents the idea that grace is not measured by how good you try to make your life and the lives of others around you, but by how you accept your life for what it is, less struggle and resistance. Whether or not this makes a character more human is based upon perspective. From my view, being "human" involves acceptance, humility, forgiveness, strength, and the courage to accept an otherwise unacceptable fate.

6. Another thematic element at work in much of O'Connor's fiction is "grace", the concept of undeserved forgiveness and/or acceptance. Consider her own statement about her characters:
"Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them...I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost, is one which is seldom understood by the casual reader, but is one which is implicit in the Christian view of the world" (1392-1393)

The violence in O'Connor's piece brings a realness to the characters. With fear instilled in them, the reader has a better understanding of the intentions of each character and what they value most. When the grandmother is threatened with losing her life, she reluctantly seeks forgiveness, but only after she is unrepentant. The Misfit, seeing how long it took for her to become accepting of her fate, and how much it took for her to stop struggling, acts in repulsion by murdering her. In a way, the Misfit can be seen showing more grace than the grandmother by his "undeserved forgiveness and/or acceptance" of violence, his fate, and the way of the world. O'Connor's usage of grace and violence can also be seen during the period in which she lived in. She was raised during the Great Depression and died during WWII. To be surrounded by violence, grief, tragedy, loss almost all of your life, usage of these elements within her writing seems only fitting to reveal truths within our society and our nature as human beings, individually and as a whole.