Flannery O Connor Use The Theme Of Dishonesty In Good Country People

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Namely, Flannery O’Connor is known for her southern gothic style and her sense of religious morbidity. O’Connor uses persistent themes of dishonesty and mockery to portray religious righteousness and the downfall of the phony throughout the majority of her short stories. In “Greenleaf”, “A Good Man Is Hard to find”, and “Good Country People” O’Connor uses religion to highlight the good and bad within society, which is reflected upon each character through deception and irony. ggggggIn “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” O’Connor uses The Misfit as a symbol of morality to highlight the Grandmother’s religious deception. The grandmother insists on God’s power, but waivers, which inevitably gets her killed. She tells The Misfit that he should pray …show more content…
In “Good Country People,” O’Connor portrays Hulga as a know-it-all that seems to, in the end, know nothing. She wants to get into trouble with the Bible salesman and disgrace his supposed purity. In her attempt to disgrace Pointer, she suffers disgrace. In “Greenleaf,” Mrs. May’s controlling nature leads her to be deprived of control in the end. By trying to control the Greenleaf Bull, she ends up dead by its horns. Mrs. May’s control over her sons, the bull, and the Greenleaf family come to a screeching halt once her control transfers from her hands to the bull’s horns. Mrs. May believes that Mrs. Greenleaf is inferior to her because of her religious practices and letting her life be in the control of an entity she cannot see or prove to be real. Even though it is indirect, Mrs. May’s mockery of “the weird holy roller” ends up being the death of her (Giannone 338). In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the Misfit is the character that highlights the grandmother’s phoniness. The Misfit says that death is inevitable and either you should follow Jesus and throw it all away or do some ‘meanness’ and enjoy yourself. This statement causes the grandmother to question Jesus’ resurrection. The grandmother’s initial argument of religion to save herself wavered, which, ironically, ends up getting her …show more content…
Greenleaf, and Manly Pointer brings the stories together more than the main character because of their manipulation of the main characters. The secondary characters that O’Connor created make the reader have a better understanding of the main characters. O’Connor creates main characters that are seemly righteous or sure of themselves just so their personality can be challenged by a secondary character who is seemly opposite to them. This leaves the reader questioning the life and motives of the main characters. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” The Misfit is able to illustrate that the grandmother is not a prim and proper southern Baptist, but merely a woman who is willing to do what it takes to save herself. In “Good Country People,” Pointer’s lack of shame makes it easy for him to carry around a hollowed-out Bible and deceive people. Pointer is an instance of someone who has no problem with doing the wrong thing, teaching Hulga a lesson in morality. Pointer is an example of how indulging “repeatedly in wrongful behavior” causes one’s “shame to lose its force” (Edmondson 68). Additionally, in “Greenleaf,” Mrs. Greenleaf is able to demonstrate a polar opposite of Mrs. May, which shows the reader why Mrs. May dies, rather than Mrs.

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