AP English Literature and Composition is one of those classes where there is no right or wrong; there are no formulas or set values to which even the most unenthused mathematician can simply “plug and chug.” Literature is the exponent of collaboration, creativity, and communication, values instilled by Academy at the Lakes. As a first semester project for AP English Literature and Composition, students in groups of four analyzed a short story and shared their analysis as a keynote-style presentation. Instances where the roles are reversed – students teaching other students and even teachers – is a great way to foster growth in public speaking among other soft skills all the while engaging seniors who seem to be halfway out Academy’s front door. Our group focused on Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” An example of Southern gothic literature, O’Connor explores the sentiments of the pre-civil rights era in rural Georgia. To preface our presentation, we posed two essential questions to our audience: (1) Does being a good person entail decency, nobility, wealth, social position, or piousness? (2) Are sinners those who are simply lost or looking for salvation? Leading up to our group presentation, we collectively analyzed this short story, examining the work with a fine-tooth comb to exhaust every literary element and rhetorical device. This is the beauty of collaboration: we each were able to share our own, unique perspectives and interpretations about O’Connor’s words. Collaborative efforts go hand-in-hand with a balanced, liberal arts education, for the skills nursed in this environment empower the leaders of tomorrow.

1. “A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND”
FLANNERY O’CONNOR
Brian Compton, Eve Lu, Vijay N Prasad, Hannah Szarko
Ms. Zalac
AP English Literature and Composition
16 November 2016

2. ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
 Does being a good person
entail decency, nobility, wealth,
social position, or piousness?
 Are sinners those who are
simply lost or looking for
salvation?

3. GENERAL CONTEXT
 Setting: rural Georgia,
1940s or 50s, vague spatial
setting, no exact locations
 Exact time is unsure;
ambiguous details perhaps
aren’t pertinent to O’Connor
 Genre: Southern Gothic
 Point of View: third person
limited omniscience
(understand the
grandmother’s thoughts

4. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
 Southern Roots and
Sentiments
 Brown v. Board of
Education (1954)
 Pre-Civil Rights Movement

5. ADVANCEMENTS IN THE AUTOMOBILE
INDUSTRY
 Chevrolet introduces
the 1955 V8 engine
 Family vacations (road
trips) became
commonplace
 Eisenhower’s $101
billion plan for national
highway system
(Gordon)

6. AUTHOR BACKGROUND: 1925 – 1964
 Native of Savannah,
Georgia
 Father struck with
lupus
 O’Connor also died
from lupus
 Wise Blood (first
novel) published in
1952, won Rinehart-
Iowa Fiction Award

7. CHARACTERIZATION

8. SOUTHERN WOMEN: CHALLENGING SOCIETY’S
NORMS AND SOCIAL POSITION
 “Burdensome models
of
femininity” (Gleeson-
White)
 “Self-satisfied in their
apparent
virtues” (Gleeson-
White)
 Nobility is cordon

9. THE GRANDMOTHER: AN ANALYSIS
 Central character
 “God chooses the
grandmother to plant the
seed of grace in the
Misfit” (Bethea)
 Vanity corrected by death
 Three bullets in chest
allude to the Trinity (Father,
Son, Holy Ghost)
 Misplaced values à

10. THE MISFIT: AN ANALYSIS
 “Prophet gone
wrong” (Bethea)
 Should seek divinity
because nothing
tangible on earth suits
his needs
 Confesses that had he
been with Jesus at the
time, he wouldn’t have

11. MINOR CHARACTERS
 Bailey: father of the household, Pitty Sing (ironic name) is
cat of Baily’s mother à static character
 Bailey’s wife: upholds passivity of domestic Southern
housewife à static character
 John Wesley, June Star, the Baby: Bailey’s self-centered,
bratty children à static characters
 Red Sammy Butts: bar-b-que restaurant operator
 Hiram, Bobby Lee: escaped convicts travelling with the
Misfit à static characters
 Hold tradition of respecting women (took great care of them being

12. THEMES

13. GOOD AND EVIL
 “ ‘I wouldn't take my children in
any direction with a criminal like
that aloose in it. I couldn't
answer to my conscience if I
did.’ ”
 The Misfit says: “ ‘sooner or
later you're going to forget what
it was you done and just be
punished for it.’ ”
 “ ‘She would of been a good
woman if it had been somebody
there to shoot her every minute
of her life.’ ”

14. RELIGION, FAITH, AND SALVATION
 “ ‘If you would pray, Jesus
would help you…’ ”
 “ ‘I was a gospel singer for
a while. I been most
everything. Been in the arm
service both land and sea,
at home and abroad, been
twict married, been an
undertaker, been with the
railroads, plowed Mother
Earth, been in a tornado,
seen a man burnt alive

15. SOCIETY IN THE 1950S
 Grandmother believes in
noble people of great
statue
 Hat symbolizes place in
society as a lady, outfit she
wears dead on the side of
the road
 “ ‘In my time children were
more respectful of their
native states and their
parents and everything

16. ALLUSIONS

17. TONES
~ Juxtaposition between a Comical Tone and Heartless Murder ~

18. CARICATURING OR GROTESQUE
 “June Star said ‘He reminds
me of a pig’ ” (referring to
Bobby Lee)
 “The grandmother raised
her head like a parched old
turkey hen crying for water”
 “Young woman in slacks,
whose face was as broad
and innocent as a cabbage
and was tied around with a
green head-kerchief that

19. BLASÉ
 Conversational violence
 “Highly unladylike…a brutal irony, a slam-
banger humor, and a style of writing as
balefully direct as a death sentence” – Time
magazine (Meyer 276)

20. PLACID
 Sense of peacefulness à opposite of
suspense as there is no building
action
 Flawless transition of events in time
that makes the systematic murder of
the family abrupt, unanticipated

21. RECAP: TONE
 Grotesque
 Caricaturing
 Blasé
 Placid

22. WRITING STYLE: DETACHED
§ Detached
narrator that
depicts plot in a
manner making
the audience
unable to
connect with
the characters
§ Simple syntax
makes the
context clear

23. IRONY

24. SITUATIONAL IRONY
 Killers long for Southern
tradition
 Gentlemen by nature
 Respect women and
children
 Quietly murder the family
with no thought to morals

25. VERBAL IRONY
 “ ‘I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal
like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I
did’ ” (O’Connor)
 “ ‘Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own
children!’ ” (O’Connor)
 Vain act of compassion and tenderness à almost a
character reversal (the Grandmother)

26. VERBAL IRONY
 “ ‘I know you're a good
man. You don't look a bit
like you have common
blood. I know you must
come from nice people!’
” (O’Connor) à first
interaction with the Misfit.
 She takes him for an
honorable man and insists
he is simply looking for
salvation in Jesus through
his actions
 Irony is that she
underestimates the power of
evil in the Misfit
 She insists she understands

27. VERBAL IRONY
 “ ‘In case of an
accident anyone
seeing the dead on the
highway would know at
once that she was a
lady’ ” (O’Connor)
 Ironic statement
foreshadowing the
climax of the plot
 Highlights
Grandmother’s ideas of
the importance of human

28. VERBAL IRONY: THE GRANDMOTHER
 Perceives self as an intelligent, upright, noble
Southern women yet she is racist
 She doesn’t actually respect others and she is
a terrible judge of character
 Lies about the cat causing the accident à “Do not lie”
Leviticus 19:11
 Falsely remembered the plantation was in Tennessee,
not Georgia à not intelligent
 Informs children that little black children are not well to
do like Southern country folks à bigot, racist comments

29. RECAP: IRONY
 Inability to reconcile with the fact that she
cannot distinguish good men from evil ones
 Inability to shut her mouth led to systematic
deaths of family
 Reflect on idea that grandmother, although
she resisted the trip in the beginning, was
responsible for family’s doom

30. ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
 Does being a good person
entail decency, nobility, wealth,
social position, or piousness?
 Are sinners those who are
simply lost or looking for
salvation?

31. WORKS CITED
 Allen, Linda. “What Is the Significance of John Wesley's and June Star's
Names in ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’”- Homework Help - ENotes.com.
Enotes.com. Enotes.com, Web. 08 Nov. 2015.
 Bethea, Arthur F. “O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Explicator 64.4
(2006): 246. Advanced Placement Source. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.
 Gleeson-White, Sarah. “A Peculiarly Southern Form Of Ugliness: Eudora
Welty, Carson Mccullers, And Flannery O’Connor.” Southern Literary
Journal 36.1 (2003): 46. Advanced Placement Source. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.
 Gordon, Sarah. “Flannery O’Connor (1925 – 1964).” New Georgia
Encyclopedia. 08 June 2015. Web. 09 November 2015.
 Meyer, Michael. “Fiction in Depth: A Study of Flannery O'Connor.” Literature
to Go. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. 276. Print.
 O'Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” The University of
Virginia. The University of Virginia, Web. 08 Nov. 2015.

32. BIBLIOGRAPHY
 Link, Alex. “Means, Meaning, And Mediated Space In ‘Good Man Is Hard To
Find.’” Southern Quarterly 44.4 (2007): 125. Advanced Placement
Source. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.
 Shmoop Editorial Team. “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Shmoop. Shmoop
University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 24 Oct. 2015.
 SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”
SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 23 Oct. 2015.
 “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” California: 20th Century Fox, 2008. Enotes.
Gale Cengage Learning. Web. 8 Nov. 2015.