Mary Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Download PDF Add to Bookshelf Report an Error

Perhaps Flannery O'Connor's most startling short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, was first published in

The Berkeley Book of Modern Writers

(ed. William Phillips and Phillip Rahv) in 1953. The story, in stark fashion, contains most of her traditional themes: the reality of evil, the inability of mankind to choose the right course of action without God's grace, the barriers of intellect and ego which isolate humans from ontological truths, the necessity of violence, shock and freakishness to dissolve self-sufficient ego, and distortions brought about by man's imperial will. O'Connor's dark view of humanity without God developed from her fundamental Catholicism intensified by the Calvinism of American romance and Southern Protestantism. Her Christian existentialist vision, similar…

2980 words

Citation: Castle, Alfred. "A Good Man Is Hard To Find". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 October 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7139, accessed 19 March 2024.]

7139 A Good Man Is Hard To Find 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here

Leave Feedback

The Literary Encyclopedia is a living community of scholars. We welcome comments which will help us improve.