Violence in O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

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Violence in O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
One of the novels that cleverly illustrated contemporary society by incorporating the habits and behaviors of the people in the real world to its characters is Flannery O’Connors, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Particularly, O’Connor smartly represented the grim attitudes that condemn society such as disrespect, hostility, and the cohabitation of physical, emotional, and psychological crimes with society. This paper will focus on the widespread depiction of violence in O’Connor’s story that was molded by our contemporary society.
In this novel, citizens constantly appeal to ethics and morality to preserve their dignity. However, this act significantly compromises their means of living. The type of violence presented in this novel is outside the boundaries of physical violence. In fact, O’Connor intelligently incorporated psychological violence that acts as a shadow behind the bushes that pervades the quotidian of the social environment. It often manifests as the negative outcomes of having a wicked morality. These feelings include agony, pain, sorrow, suffering, and terror. Such feelings dominate men over women, especially, under the anticipation of violence or death.
The characters unveiled the nature of humans and envisioned the dichotomous relationship between good and evil. O’Connor upholds the strange potential of violence to bring her characters back to reality. Moreover, the events of violence in the story help build the characters to prepare themselves before accepting the moment of grace.
Rather than treating violence as the end, it is considered as an extreme situation that uncovers the true nature of a man. Thus, it can be used for both good and evil purposes. O’Connor deliberately illustrated in her novel that man does incredibly out-of-character actions under pressure like in life-and-death situations.
This story starts by presenting a family of six who went for a trip to Florida as a form of vacation. As the family faced a car accident, a convict who has recently escaped the prison (the Misfit), took this opportunity to hijack the car. It places the family under severe stress which prompted them to assume an imminent death situation (O’Connor).
Death is regarded as the most relevant position in life offered to Christians (Paulson and O’Connor 14). However, it is undoubtedly the most ironic stance in life since everyone is destined to die one day but no one will ever be ready for it. In the story, the Grandmother, the heroine in the story, succumbed to false faith as she witnessed the moment of all of her family m...