Examples Of Atheism In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Flannery O’Connor presents the audience with two characters who have completely different mind sets, yet come to an unfortunate cross road in their life, in the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. The audience is presented with the main characters of the grandmother and The Misfit. The grandmother shows strict Christian values throughout the whole story and is brought up to seem as though she is the victim in the end. On the other hand The Misfit shows values of being an existential atheist, and this portrays him as being the heartless villain. Although the idea of existential atheism associated with negative values in his story, one must look further into their characters values rather than their actions in order to get a clear idea …show more content…
She possesses a selfish attitude from the beginning of the story. An example of this is when the family is in the car accident. The grandmother has no concern for if anyone else is hurt, all she can think is “she was hoping she was injured so that Bailey’s wrath would not come down on her all at once”. While new Christian ideals are much more open minded and loving, the grandmother possesses older values that lead her to possess the characteristic of being self-righteous. We see this again with the grandmother referring to anyone who is different from her as the “common man”. This is a result of her feeling as though she does not actually have to deal with any of the problems she is faced with, that it all falls into gods will. The Grandmother displays how her dated values can be used to suppress thought and can be used as a coping mechanism. This is beneficial until it is used constantly. Some people need something to believe in, in order to make sense of a situation, however this becomes detrimental once it is used for every purpose. She uses this excuse often in the story, even in order to make the decision as to where to take their vacation. She claims that god would never want to put them on a path that would be detrimental to them. This shows the dramatic irony considering the audience comes to be aware that the path that “god chose” ended up leading them to their death. The …show more content…
The Misfit was once a man of god, and he was brought up in a good family. However he experiences unexplained situations and loses his faith. The Misfit was put into the penitentiary for reasons that he does not know. Although being in a penitentiary takes a toll on one mentally, he even discusses how being surrounded by four walls all the time makes you forget things, The Misfit emerged with a grounded mindset. We see this when the grandmother asks him why he did not pray when he was imprisoned. The Misfit responds with “I didn’t want any help”. This shows his independent mindset. There was never a point in the story in which he tried to put blame on anyone else. He even explains that the men working for him are not the ones in the wrong, they are just loyal to the wrong man. He has grown to the point that he wants to accomplish things on his own, good or bad. In return, not only does he want to accomplish his actions single handedly, but he wants to take responsibility for them too. He admits that he doesn’t know what he did to get himself imprisoned, but that he truly believes that he committed a crime and deserved the punishment he was given. One can tell that he is not one to make excuses for his actions. He talks about how he would not have stolen anything because no one had anything he wanted and that he would not have killed his father