In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, originally published in a 1955 short story collection by the same title, a family travels to Florida. At the same time, a convicted murderer, dubbed “The Misfit”, has escaped from prison and is on the run. The details of his crimes are initially told by way of newspaper stories and gossip.
Strategically Placed Symbols
O’Connor strategically places a sequence of funerary symbols in various points throughout the narrative. The old family burial ground with the “five or six graves”; the gloomy, wooded area the family’s car lands in; and the hearse-like automobile that approaches to help all serve to generate an ominous mood. Initially, this imagery--like the grave sites glimpsed while the family car passes—appears innocuous. Together, however, these images begin to point beyond their literal meaning and collectively prefigure the violence to come.
The Family Graveyard
The first instance of obvious funerary symbolism appears during the road trip. O’Connor’s third person narrator writes, “They passed a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. ‘Look at the graveyard!’ the grandmother said, pointing it out. ‘That was the old family burying ground.’” While this seems to be an entirely chance sighting, O’Connor’s specific mention of the number of grave plots indicates that it is no trivial inclusion. If the reader is to count up the number of people in the car: grandmother, Bailey, mother, baby, June Star and John Wesley, it equals the number of graves.
Tall, Dark and Deep Woods
The next instance of funerary symbolism is slightly more abstract. O’Connor again uses her third person narrator to describe the setting, “Behind the ditch they were sitting in, there were more woods, tall and dark and deep.” This choice of expression closely resembles the last stanza of Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” a poem written in 1922. It reads:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Critics interpret Frost’s poetic ‘woods’ to symbolize death. Written and analyzed long before O’Connor produced her work, the Frost poem and its popular symbolic interpretation may have influenced O'Connor's word choice. O’Connor’s woods, which are tall, dark, and deep (but hardly ‘lovely’ like Frost’s, under the circumstances) may speak to the shadowy future that lies before them. Certainly, each character is taken further into these woods and away from the clearing to be killed. Additionally, the author’s choice of the descriptive ‘tall’ over other adjectives may signify that the woods entirely blot out the sunshine, making an ominous dusk descend on the family even at mid-day.
A Hearse-like Automobile
The final instance of funerary symbolism appears just before the physical appearance of The Misfit and his two accomplices. O’Connor describes the car the group arrives in as “a big black battered hearse-like automobile.”
O’Connor does not refer to the car as ‘a big boat of an automobile’ nor does she describe it by its brand name, such as Chrysler, Cadillac, or Lincoln. Instead, she focuses the reader’s attention on mood by using a descriptive one-word image that comes with immediate associations: ‘hearse-like’.
A Strategically-chosen Simile
The simile O’Connor chooses instantly conjures up images of funerals and death. The car, coming over the hill, disappears for a moment—as if in reprieve—but resurfaces again as something inevitable, like the family’s ultimate death. Earlier, safely traveling in their car, peering out its windows, the family passed death by. Here, O’Connor indicates that death has finally arrived for the family and cannot be escaped.
Closing Commentary
O’Connor, renowned for her use of symbols, consciously chooses a line of significant images and comparisons to set a mood of foreboding in her work. Readers might intuit from the moment the Misfit’s escape is mentioned that the lives of the family and Misfit will intertwine. While the death of each family member still has the capacity to shock readers, O’Connor foreshadows this result all along.
Savannah Schroll Guz - Savannah Schroll Guz holds a Master's Degree from the University of Pittsburgh. In 1997-1998, she was a Fulbright Scholar and worked as a ...
