Comparison And Contrast Of O

’connor’s Works Essay, Research Paper

Your NameComparison and Contrast EssayClassDate Flannery O Connor s A Good Man is Hard to Find and her short story Good CountryPeople are similar in characterization, plot development, and theme. These stories both containcharacters that think of themselves as superior to other characters. Both of these stories alsoillustrate characters that make bad judgments of other characters, and the negative effects thatthe choice brings. These two stories also deal with the theme of not judging a person by his orher appearances, and how this directly effects the outcome of the story. Both A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good Country People feature a character thatsees himself or herself superior to the other characters. In the short story A Good Man is Hardto Find, the grandmother thinks that she is superior to the other characters, and is best shownwhen she is talking with The Misfit about Jesus and forgiveness. In Good Country People, Hulga thinks of herself as more intelligent than Manley Pointer. This use of superiority as anelement of characterization shows that in spite of this belief that the character is more superiorthan the other characters, the story ends fairly unpleasant for them. We also learn by the end ofthe story that these characters were in fact not more superior, but rather just thought ofthemselves higher than they actually were. In both of these stories, a central character misjudges another individual. This error injudgment results in a sudden point of insight, an epiphany, when the characters realize theirmisjudgment. In O Connor s A Good Man is Hard to Find, this epiphany takes place when thegrandmother suddenly realizes that the family has encountered The Misfit. In Good Country

People, this epiphany takes place when Hulga finds out that Manley Pointer is not in actuality aBible salesman, and she then tries to reason with him to get her artificial leg back. This use ofthe epiphany in Flannery O Connor s works shows that she relies heavily on this crucial turn ofevents in order to surprise the reader and conclude the story in a manner that the reader probablywill not expect. These stories both deal with the theme of appearances versus reality, with relation towhat makes a person good. Both story titles reflect this theme by how in A Good Man isHard to Find, Red Sammy Butts misjudges what he thinks are good people just by their looks. In Sammy Butts case, this misjudgment of who good people are only resulted in the loss of afew dollars worth of gas, while in Good Country People, Hulga s misjudgment of theBible-salesman ends up with him running off with not only her artificial leg, but, as the says, theonly thing that made her different than other people. This theme of not judging people by theirappearances plays an important role in the events of the story, and how when these charactersmake this false judgment, it is very detrimental, either by the loss of the money in Sammy Butts case, or the loss of the artificial leg in Hulga s occurrence. Flannery O Connor s short stories A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good CountryPeople both contain similar literary elements of characterization, plot development, and theme. These stories both illustrate the idea of misjudgments, and the negative consequences that mayfollow. These stories also center on the belief that a person should not judge another by his orher appearances. Your NameComparison and Contrast EssayDateClass