A Good Man is Hard to Find

             The persuasive use of irony is evident in the short story, Flannery O'Connor's " A Good Man is Hard to Find." The author uses irony to talk about the villain of our society and how they do not always live up to the expectations. The Misfit in the story is not all evil because he really did not want to kill the family. He had to kill them because he had to protect his freedom. "It's no real pleasure in life." (330)
             The setting of the story is centered on a typical family's travel to the state of Florida. However, along the way, they suffer a horrible automobile accident, and the villainous, escaped convict known as "The Misfit" murders the family. The initial sentence in the story is a protest by the grandmother. The grandmother's intentions were to persuade the family plans of traveling to Florida instead a trip to Tennessee. Consequently, from the initial dialect, and many to follow, the grandmother presents one demand after another which carries throughout the story to ultimately seal her family's fate and her own.
             The grandmother's first attempts to defend her self-indulgent demands by proclaiming to Bailey, her son, "I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did." (320) However, ultimately in the story, this becomes the exact conclusion of the family. Her egotism and expedient attitude shown through her demands, leads her and her family into the hands of the Misfit. Ironically, her entire argument against the family trip to Florida was to avoid the same man ("The Misfit") who eventually murders the family in Georgia. The grandmother also secretly sneaks her cat, Pitty Sing, along with the family in the car, a decision that proves to be the most destructive to the family's welfare. Subsequently, realizing th
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A Good Man is Hard to Find. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 08:48, April 23, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/75311.html