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A Good Man Is Hard To Find Literary Analysis Essay

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A formalist critic will be the best literary analysis for the grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor because her selfishness leads to her and her family’s death in the end. The grandmother lacks severe self-awareness, but she still describes herself to be a lady. The grandmother is a southern older Caucasian woman who only cares about her self-image and how everyone else sees her. She is an uptight person, who thinks the world revolves around only her. Most of it has to do with her pride and what she did not have within her life. Her way of speaking and how she dresses are indications that she considers herself to be a lady. For instance, when they are traveling the grandmother has on “a navy blue straw sailor hat …show more content…
She states to put her pride on the back burner and plead The Misfit for her life, but had not thought about her loved one’s life whose was previously taken. At the moment, she forgets what her self-image looks like because majority all of the things she once cared about did not matter anymore, but her own life that she is trying her best to save. This is another way of her showing selfishness because she only thought about saving her life rather than her own blood although she did call for Bailey once, because any grandmother would lay down her live for her children and grandchildren.
In conclusion, the grandmother proves her selfishness during different encounters throughout the story. Although she is the complete opposite of a good Christian person, she still considers herself a good woman. The story could have ended in a totally different way, if only the grandmother had not been so self-centered and put her family in danger. Sometimes people realize that they are doing wrong when it is too late to go back and correct things. Maybe she and her family would have had a second chance at living if she had not annoyed The Misfit so much, which left him with no other options but to kill

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