O’Connor’s ability to balance brutality with comedy, blend humor with tragic occurrences, and the seriousness with absurdity, captivates the readers’ attention. The primary message in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is the worth of happiness and the illogicality of life. The story is an excellent demonstration of complex human nature and the ridiculousness of existence, in which evil and good coexist. The absurdity is the central theme in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”
Essentially, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” addresses a fundamental topic. The philosophical idea of absurdity serves as the story’s critical premise. The narrative is one of O’Connor’s well-regarded because of her ability to integrate the incongruous (Ismail, 2020). According to Zhao (2017), the protagonists, plot, and other perplexing facts or imagery that O’Connor pontificates on throughout the text make absurdity particularly evident. The grandmother, the story’s protagonist, is a remarkable example of absurdity, and her character is finely portrayed. O’Connor (1977) depicts a naive old woman who enjoys giving lessons to her children: for instance, “in my time children were more respectful of their native states” (p. 5). Despite this, she understands how to manipulate family members, committing rash activities without concern for the consequences. The grandmother is more preoccupied with her survival than with her family. She claims that ‘the Misfit’ is a good person and begs him before her death: “I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady!” (O’Connor, 1977, p. 15). The heroine presents herself as an intelligent, graceful, and well-educated woman, but she is ultimately a hypocritical, dictatorial, and self-centered woman.
Even though the grandmother is well aware that her son, Bailey, is opposed to transporting the cat to the motel, she surreptitiously conceals the cat in the car, inventing an irrational excuse for herself. She feels the cat will miss her terribly, and “he might brush against one of the gas burners” and inadvertently suffocate himself to death (O’Connor, 1977, p. 4). The ridiculousness is that the grandma rationally insists on going to Tennessee because she does not want to go to Florida. Nevertheless, the grandmother says to Bailey that she wants to avoid seeing the criminal ‘The Misfit’ and argues that she would never “take my children in any direction with a criminal” (O’Connor, 1977, p. 3). Surprisingly, even though grandmother plans everything with painstaking precision, the unpredictability of reality sometimes runs counter to her reasoning and will (Zhao, 2017). Her choice to take the cat influences the murder of the family. Ultimately, the cat is the cause of the turnover and the family’s interaction with ‘the Misfit.’
The antagonist named ‘the Misfit’ is a mystery murderer with a good past. According to Zhao (2017), the ridiculous representation of ‘The Misfit’ is “dramatically conspicuous” (p. 41). He appears to be a killer coming from the “finest people in the world” (O’Connor, 1977, p. 11). The man tells the grandmother, “God never made a finer woman than my mother,” adding that his father’s heart was the purest (O’Connor, 1977, p. 11). He attempted to achieve in life by singing gospel, serving in the army, being married twice, and working hard, but all of his efforts were futile, prompting him to become a criminal and killer. According to ‘The Misfit,’ children make him uncomfortable and nervous, whereas violence helps him understand the meaning of life and existence. Furthermore, it is for this reason that he murders the family without remorse or mercy.
The contrast between good and evil principles also illustrates the scenario’s ridiculousness. ‘The Misfit,’ for instance, apologizes for not wearing a shirt in the presence of women: “I’m sorry I don’t have on a shirt before you ladies” (O’Connor, 1977, p. 13). At the very same time, he politely demands the children’s mother join his friends in the forest to be brutally murdered. ‘The Misfit’ asks the mother and her daughter “to step off yonder with Bobby Lee and Hiram” to rejoin Bailey (O’Connor, 1977, p. 14). Thus, O’Connor expresses her profound real-life experience through the image of ‘the Misfit.’ The writer emphasizes how clueless individuals appear to their bizarre situations in modern civic society.
To conclude, absurdity is the central theme in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” The writer employs this topic to convey the essential idea to readers that there is no happiness while evil roams the society, like ‘the Misfit,’ and kills people for no reason. Using the family as an image, O’Connor proves there can be no joy without compassion, respect, and care for one another. Furthermore, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is an excellent example of complicated human nature, personality dualism, and the folly of life in which evil and good coexist. The fictional universe of Flannery O’Connor provides a unique analysis of human reality. Therefore, readers may thoroughly experience the absurdity of existence via inappropriate apathy and detachment among family members and the contradiction of ‘the Misfit.’
References
Ismail, S. (2020). Humor and grotesque in Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find. International Journal of Education & Philology, 1(1), 35-39.
O’Connor, F. (1977). A good man is hard to find and other stories. Mariner Books.
Zhao, Y. (2017). The absurd theme in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. 2017 3rd International Conference on Economy, Management and Education Technology (ICEMET 2017).