Symbolism In A Good Man Is Hard To Find By O Connor

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O’Connor uses symbolism in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” in connecting real life and the story
Introduction
“A Good Man Is Hard to find” is one of the early works of O’Connor published in 1953 (O 'Connor & Asals 4). The short story at great extents makes an excellent illustration of the ability of the author to systematically combine humor with thematic material. O’Connor portrays a sense of a society that she thought was changing for worse. O’Connor is displeased with her society and depicts her opinion by using the grandmother to demonstrate what was happening at that particular time. The story reveals the demise of O’Connor’s society through a fascinating gap between the grandmother and her family with the grandmother representing the devoutness
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The hat of the grandmother is an outstanding symbol through the story as it represented the position of the grandmother as a lady. The grandmother wore her hat so that the people she came across with would recognize that she was a lady. For instance, when the family was leaving for the vacation, the grandmother was very careful on her dressing and immediately put on her hat so that whoever saw her body in the event of an accident would recognize that she was a lady. In the event that the son of the grandmother had an accident, the foundation of her self-image was broken. When the murders took Baily and John Wesley to the woods, the grandmother immediately reached for her hat and adjusted it as if she was accompanying them to the woods. In the incidence she dropped her hat and lost her self-conception as a lady. The only thing that mattered to the grandmother was her ability to stand as a lady which reveals her fragile and egotism moral conviction. From O’Connor short story, it is evident that the conception of ladylike behaviors is superficial and at great extent related to one’s …show more content…
As the grandmother had a clear understanding on the intellectual knowledge of God, she engaged herself with a spiritual conversation with the Misfit, a phenomenon that made the murder very emotional. The grandmother also reveals that all people are God’s creature and that external appearances are all meaningless to the human life. The author reveals that until the point of her death, the grandmother was living a latter by living in the best way she thought would save her from the cruelty of the world which included manipulating other people to achieve personal ends. In the long run, the grandmother dropped her attempts to control and manipulate others and finally expresses real love. O’Connor argues that the grandmother had to abandon her manipulative and self-absorption nature, her focus on class as well as her external show of Christianity to actually find a “good

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