A Good Man Is Hard To Find Irony Analysis

In a dramatic tale of a family’s vacation gone wrong, the characters fail to perceive what is obvious to the audience reading the story. “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people,” the Grandmother says as she shows the newspaper to Bailey, the son, concerned. As the grandmother explains the reasons that she does not want to go to Florida, a dangerous misfit on the loose is her main point. Little did the grandmother know that she and her family would soon be going to Florida and faced with the misfit right away. The foundation of irony in Flannery O’Connor’s A Good man is Hard to Find is established right away in the short story. The grandmother alludes to many ironic facts that will take place later in the story. O’Connor uses an ironic …show more content…
Her appearance and mannerisms aid in portraying this. As the grandmother prepares for the car ride she gets dressed up in lady-like clothing just in case “of an accident anyone seeing the dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” This is ironic to the story in two ways. First, this alludes to the fact that she later will lay dead on the highway. Secondly, her absolute need to prove that she is a lady though she is not. The grandmother views herself as lady like- proper, gentle, and upright. Despite this, the reader can view her actions to reveal otherwise. Throughout the story she excessively lies, makes racist comments, and is very negative. She seems to be very quick to judge others before judging her own actions. This is literary irony as the readers can view the grandmother’s false interpretation of herself. It is not until the very end of the story that she realizes her real