A Good Man is Hard to Find Themes
Good vs. Evil
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a confrontation of between a grandmother with a rather superficial sense of goodness, and a criminal who embodies real evil. The grandmother seems to treat goodness...
Religion
The central confrontation between the grandmother and The Misfit in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" revolves around Jesus. The grandmother brings up praying to Jesus in the hope that she can induce Th...
Manipulation
Flannery O'Connor understood her story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" as a tale of good, evil, and divine grace. Other critics, however, have seen in it something more cynical. Many see it as the sto...
Family
Besides its more serious themes, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" contains some mercilessly funny comedy about a dysfunctional family, and the ways they get on each other's nerves. You know, the kind o...
Society and Class
The grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" gives great importance to being "a lady," and her ideas about what that means reflect an old-fashioned, somewhat upper-crust Southern mindset. She us...