Despite the relatively limited volume of Flannery O'Connor's published fiction, she is regarded as one of the most significant figures in the American literary canon. Throughout her three novels and two volumes of short stories, O'Connor addresses a number of problematic issues and ideas, mostly through a conceptual framework firmly grounded in her devout Catholic faith. An overarching theme in O'Connor's fiction is the indictment of the paucity of ethics extant in modern society. Further, the characters in her stories are often exposed to shocking violence as a means of achieving an ultimately meaningful moment of grace (Martin 15). An examination of the use of symbolism, religious motifs, and characterization in O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" reveals her emphasis on both of these recurrent themes.
             Because many of O'Connor's stories are didactic in nature and similar in function to parables or fables, she relies heavily on the use of symbolism in order to invest even the minutest elements of her fiction with thematic significance. In "A Good Man is Hard to Find," O'Connor employs symbols that not only serve to define the archetypes of certain characters, but also to amplify the confusion surrounding the lack of the expected moral characteristics associated with the characters (Merton 146).
             In the story, O'Connor uses images and symbols to add to the reader's perceptions of the archetypes she presents in the story. The grandmother is painstakingly associated with the archetype of the genteel, aging Southern belle. She goes to great lengths to be certain that her outer appearance conveys what she perceives as the information most vital to her self-definition. She impracticably bedecks herself in the regalia befitting of Southern Womanhood so that "anyone seeing her dead on the highway would at once know she was a lady" (138). Likewise, O'Connor associates the Misfit with symbols of foreboding and dread. The car ...