A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Crystal R Lewis Professor R. A. Hughes English 1020 NO3 Summer, 2013 July 1 Assignment # 4, Midterm A Good Man Is Hard To Find By; Flannery O’Connor The grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to find” considers herself morally superior to others by virtue of her being a “lady,” and she freely and frequently passes judgment on others. She claims that her conscience is a guiding force in her life, such as when she tells Bailey; 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” (O' Connor 250). She criticizes the children’s mother for not traveling to a place that would allow the children to “be broad,” and she compares the mother’s face to a cabbage. She chastises John Wesley for not having more respect for Georgia, his home state. She also takes any opportunity to judge the lack of goodness in people in the world today. During all this, she proudly wears her carefully selected dress and hat, certain that being a lady is the most important virtue of all, one that she alone harbors (O' Connor 250). The grandmother tries to convince her son, Bailey, and his wife to take the family to east Tennessee for vacation instead of Florida. She points out an article about the Misfit, an escaped convict heading toward Florida, and adds that the children have already been there. John Wesley, eight years old, tells the grandmother; “If you don’t want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?” (O' Connor 250) June Star says nastily; “She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day” (O' Connor 250). On the day of the trip, the grandmother hides her cat, Pity Sing, in a basket in the car. She wears a dress and hat with flowers on it so that people will know she is “a lady”. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was “a lady” (O' Connor 251) In the car, John Wesley says; “Let’s go through Georgia fast so we won’t have to look at it much”