DISCUSSION

1. You must make one entry- 2 SIGNIFICANT paragraphs, about A Good Man is Hard to Find 2. You must make two responses to your peers- not just “I agree or disagree” but a comment briefly explaining your response (this will then give you three points for the discussion participation) 3. Feel free to make observations or references which bring in another work or writer 4. The following excerpts from O’Connor are just to help generate some ideas 5. Don’t forget that one of the significant characteristics of Southern Gothic writers is humor- dark it may be, but it is there. Flannery O’Connor was aware of her art and often provided insights through her letters and infrequent essays. Some interesting excerpts which may help to think about A Good Man is Hard to Find:  From a letter to Andrew Lytle, September 15, 1955: To my way of thinking, the only thing that keeps me from being a regional writer is being a Catholic and the only thing that keeps me from being a Catholic writer (in the narrow sense) is being a Southerner.  From a letter to John Hawkes, April 14, 1960: It is interesting to me that your students naturally work their way to the idea that the Grandmother in “A Good Man” is not pure evil and may be a medium for Grace. If they were Southern students they would say that they all had grandmothers like her at home. These old ladies exactly reflect the banalities of the society and the effect is of the comical rather than the seriously evil. But [Lytle, above] insists that she is a witch, even down to the cat. These children, your students, know that she is not a witch… Perhaps it is a difference in theology, or rather the difference that ingrained theology makes in the sensibility. Grace, in the Catholic way of thinking, can and does use as its medium the imperfect, purely human, and even hypocritical. Cutting yourself off from Grace is a very decided matter, requiring a real choice, act of will, and affecting the very ground of the soul. The Misfit is touched by the Grace that comes through the old lady when she recognizes him as her own child, as she has been touched by the Grace- that comes through him in his particular suffering. His shooting her is a recoil, a horror at her humanness, but after he has done it and cleaned his glasses, the Grace has worked in him and he pronounces his judgment: she would have been a good woman if he had been there every minute of her life. True enough. In the Protestant view, I think Grace and nature don’t have much to do with each other. The old lady, because of her hypocrisy and humanness and banality couldn’t be a medium for Grace. In the sense that I see things the other way, I’m a Catholic writer. Think about what the differences are in her assessment. Don’t worry about a strict “religious” aspect; rather think about her sense of the grandmother’s “hypocrisy, humanness and banality.” For the Discussion, point out what, ultimately, led to the ending. Was there an inevitability because of the grandmother’s actions, behavior, sensibility? Do you think there’s any chance that the Misfit would have spared the grandmother’s life if events (or remarks) had gone differently? You can include in your remarks techniques O’Connor used in her writing- e.g.  does it seem significant who is named (with a real name, not merely a title or reference)  how does O’Connor use past and present to emphasized conflicts and a sense of realty/nonreality  What kind of clues and foreshadowing are give/used