Fiction Essay
Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner said that a writer must “leave no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking with any story is ephemeral and doomed- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” Flannery O’Connor uses these universal truths in her short story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. An old southern woman trying to come to terms with the new culture of the south dooms her family by unknowingly leading them to come face to face with a notorious criminal called “The Misfit”. O’Connor pushes her characters to the edge using violence so that they may find grace. In the story, there is a human versus human conflict. The grandmother constantly compares her two grandchildren with the way things used to be in her time. The grandmother says, “In my time, children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else.” (O’Connor 119). The grandchildren are terribly rude and are always speaking everything that is on their minds without a filter. There is also a human versus environment/society conflict. The grandmother comes from a time where slavery still existed, or, the Old South. She was brought up differently than her grandchildren who …show more content…
In “A Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable,” O’Connor explains her reasons for doing this. O’Connor writes, “I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace.” (O’Connor 1048). The grandmother’s violent murder gave her grace and clarity. O’Connor also shows us that there are humans that fear only for themselves and not others and that sometimes tragedy happens even though it is not fair. But another thing O’Connor shows us is that just like how tragedy happens, grace is also given to those who do not deserve
Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner said that a writer must “leave no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking with any story is ephemeral and doomed- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” Flannery O’Connor uses these universal truths in her short story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. An old southern woman trying to come to terms with the new culture of the south dooms her family by unknowingly leading them to come face to face with a notorious criminal called “The Misfit”. O’Connor pushes her characters to the edge using violence so that they may find grace. In the story, there is a human versus human conflict. The grandmother constantly compares her two grandchildren with the way things used to be in her time. The grandmother says, “In my time, children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else.” (O’Connor 119). The grandchildren are terribly rude and are always speaking everything that is on their minds without a filter. There is also a human versus environment/society conflict. The grandmother comes from a time where slavery still existed, or, the Old South. She was brought up differently than her grandchildren who …show more content…
In “A Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable,” O’Connor explains her reasons for doing this. O’Connor writes, “I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace.” (O’Connor 1048). The grandmother’s violent murder gave her grace and clarity. O’Connor also shows us that there are humans that fear only for themselves and not others and that sometimes tragedy happens even though it is not fair. But another thing O’Connor shows us is that just like how tragedy happens, grace is also given to those who do not deserve