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

Alfred Castle (Independent Scholar - North America)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1955

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Story Collection

Resources

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 …

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2980 words

Citation: Castle, Alfred. "A Good Man Is Hard To Find". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 October 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=7139, accessed 23 November 2024.]

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