Moral Themes in O’Connor’s a Good Man is Hard to Find

O’Connor uses the Misfit, the only character with any sense of means to ask morally serious questions about human experience, to show “the remotely connotative of the eternal Misfit, Christ…” (Bonney 347. Bonney says O’Connor “never making it plain whether the grandmother… perceives the Misfit as one of own children” (Bonney 348) or whether the old woman is using more manipulative ploy in an effort to avoid death (O’Connor 412. Bonney focuses on the Grandmother and how her role is significant to the story line involving religion and connection to other characters.

The grandmother plays a ruthless manipulative and moralistic. This scene helps tell the story because it talks about the children’s mother point of view and the grandmother’s point of view of how Georgia is actually being portrayed (Bonney 351; O’Connor 406. The description of Georgia is portrayed to downplay the failure of it being a “respectful of…native states” (Bonney 351; O’Connor 405. He says the outcome from the aspects are meet with the thought of failing is how the story is being told (Bonney 351. The grandmother talks about Georgia this way because she believes the past is preferable than the present according to Bonney (351. O’Connor uses words in oxymoronic ways to “undo rhetorically the struggle to achieve stability that many protagonist manifests in their own thoughts” (Bonney 352. Bonney believes O’Connor understands “Pride as a most seductive and insidious sin” (Bonney 350. He says pride is being used as a symbol to the people whom are properly stable mentally and physically (Bonney 350. The grandmother plays this whenever she takes her cat on the trip and it seeks to cause the car wreck and “precipitates the victimization of everyone in the family by the Misfit” (Bonney 352) ( O’Connor 408).

With this being, Bonney expresses one can come to realization through agony and then deny to everyone else (Bonney 350). William Bonney believes O’Connor structured the story to convey a message through a dramatic tale. Bonney expresses the meaning of the story and how it will help understand the meaning of the story. Bonney claims that O’Connor uses drama to help understand the beliefs, structure, and the literal meaning of A Good Man Is Hard To Find (Bonney 356. He says “… in this story everyone is on a morally defensive and conflicting journey, and the cost of such physical mobility is the most lethally extreme catastrophe” (Bonney 353. William Bonney suggests the protagonists confronts some sort of calamity either as a consequence or result of one entering the protagonist’s area (Bonney 353. He talks about how mental and physical state of being is used to help gather information from the perceptions being implied through the characters (Bonney 347. According to Bonney “…the fallen world of Pride and materialism can be transcended by at least a few” (Bonney 348. 

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