ملخص لقصة A Good Man is Hard to Find.

الإثنين سبتمبر 26, 2011 3:30 pm

The story opens with an
unnamed grandmother complaining to her son, Bailey, that she would rather go to
Tennessee for vacation than Florida. The family resolves to go to Florida
regardless. She spites them by rising early and waiting in the car, dressed in
her Sunday best, so that if she should die in an accident she will be
recognized as "a lady."

The grandmother talks
incessantly during the trip, recalling her youth in the Old South and
commenting on various things she sees. When the family stops at a diner, called
"The Tower," for lunch, she engages the owner, Red Sammy, in
conversation about an escaped murderer known as "The Misfit." The
grandmother agrees with Sammy's assertion that a good man is increasingly hard
to find.

Back on the road, the
ever-manipulative grandmother, trying to detour the family away from Florida,
begins telling stories about a nearby home that she had visited as a child.
Upon hearing that it has secret passages, the children become fixated on
visiting the house, and they pester their father until he agrees to follow the
grandmother's directions. When her directions lead them down an abandoned dirt
road, she realizes that the house is, in fact, in Tennessee and not Georgia.
Flustered, she upsets her cat, which panics, causing Bailey to lose control and
end up in a ditch. The children view the accident as an adventure; the
grandmother feigns an internal injury in order to gain sympathy.

The family waits for
help. A car pulls up and three men get out, the leader a shirtless, bespectacled
man. All three men have guns. The man in glasses instructs his cohorts to
inspect the family's car and engages Bailey in polite conversation until the
grandmother identifies him as an escaped convict known as "The
Misfit." The Misfit shot his own father, he says, though he says that's
what he's been told --he doesn't believe it. As The Misfit instructs his
accomplices to murder the family one by one, the grandmother begins pleading
for her own life by the typical flattery of a manipulative southern woman who
considers herself such a lady, such a good Christian. When the Misfit ignores
her pleas, she becomes speechless. Panicked, she attempts to witness about
Jesus. The Misfit becomes visibly angry: he is angry with Christ for having
given no physical evidence for His existence, casting doubt about the
legitimacy of Christianity. He does not want to waste his life serving a figure
who may not exist, nor does he want to displease an almighty God who may exist;
he has settled on the idea that "There's no pleasure but meanness."
The grandmother reaches out and touches The Misfit, prompting him to recoil and
shoot her three times.

When the accomplice
finishes murdering the family, the Misfit takes a moment to clean his glasses,
concluding that "she [the grandmother] would have been a good woman, if it
had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." He echoes
O'Connor's traditional Christian view that this is properly the role of the
conscience informed by the Holy Spirit. When his accomplice comments on the fun
that they've had in killing, the Misfit tells him, "It's no real pleasure
in life."

Again, in O'Connor's
view, a phony Christian--that is, the grandmother--through an act of violence
finally comes to be genuinely converted. A good man/woman is indeed hard to
find. At last the grandmother humbles herself, realizing that she's no better
than a murderer and misfit herself--for such are metaphorically her babies,
part of the fallen human family. (He is wearing her son's shirt by then--as if
to increase symbolically the connection.) She can finally receive saving grace.

الجمعة مارس 30, 2012 4:35 am

الإثنين أكتوبر 08, 2012 10:33 pm

It is a highly effective topic

thanks

ملخص لقصة A Good Man is Hard to Find.

ملخص لقصة A Good Man is Hard to Find.

رد: ملخص لقصة A Good Man is Hard to Find.

رد: ملخص لقصة A Good Man is Hard to Find.