A Good Man is Hard to Find

A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND Name Institution affiliation Course Date of Submission A Good Man is Hard to Find One of the most prominent themes of O`Connor`s short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is religion. The Grandmother, who is the main character in the story does not entirely show her religious side until the time when she is faced with The Misfit and his cahoots. However, before that happening that turned the story to a completely new direction, there were other religious undertones in the story that contributed albeit marginally to this theme. The Grandmother considers herself as a good Christian. However, in her character she seem to have a leaning towards appearance than substance where she is portrayed as wanting to wear her best outfits when travelling so that, verbatim: "anyone seeing her dead [...] would know at once that she was a lady" (pp. 2) . We can therefore say that the Grandmother lives in some kind of a spiritual void, since she accepts it without real commitment.The central confrontation between these two characters revolves around Jesus. It was after she heard gunshots coming from the woods - in a horrifying incident where we come to learn that Bobby Lee had shot dead Bailey and John Wesley - that we see the Grandmother telling The Misfit to pray to Jesus. The Grandmother reveals her religious side at this incident and uses religion as bait with the intention of dissuading The Misfit from killing her, thus: "You`ve got Blood! I know you wouldn`t shoot a lady!…Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady." (pp 10). With this she is trying to use manipulation so that she can fulfill her selfish needs, which is also the biggest showing of hierocracy by the grandmother. This leaves the reader confuses about the character and person of th...