A-Good-Man-Is-Hard-to-Find-Power-Point.ppt-TeacherWeb.pptVIP

A Good Man Is Hard to Findby Flannery O’Connor A Journey through Her Short Story “The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make them appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the blind you draw large and startling figures.”  — Flannery OConnor Flannery O’Connor The Southern Highway * Known as both a Southern and a Catholic writer, Flannery OConnor (1925-1964) wrote stories that are hard to forget. Whether for their humor, brilliant characterization, local color, or shocking plots, Flannery OConnors short stories, in which the voices of displaced persons affirm the grace of God in the grotesqueries of the world, continue to disturb and resonate. As OConnor said herself, her stories make [her] vision apparent by shock. (Georgia Women of Achievement, via Internet Public Library) One of OConnors most widely read stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find (written in 1953), without a doubt is also her most shocking. Yet is it through the storys disturbing ending that OConnor raises fundamental questions about good and evil, morality and immorality, faith and doubt, and the particularly Southern binaries of black and white and Southern history and progress. Fundamental Questions In this lesson, you will explore these dichotomies—and challenge them—while closely reading and analyzing A Good Man is Hard to Find. In the course of studying this particular OConnor short story, we will learn as well about the 1950s South, including evolving transportation in the U.S.-transportatio