A Good Man Is Hard to Find Characterization of the Grandmothers Conscience Essay Example

A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Characterization of the Grandmothers Conscience Essay Short Stories: A good man is hard to find by Flannery OConnor The short story â€Å"A good man is hard to find† written by Flannery O’Connor is set in the south of the United States and is about an old lady and her family, consisting of her son and his wife and her three little grandchildren, who get involved into a very dangerous and finally tragic situation. After having an accident the elusive criminal The Misfit incidentally passes by their location. Being recognized as The Misfit by the grandmother, he consequently starts killing her family with the help of two companions. Instead of begging for the lives of her son, her daughter-in-law or her grandchildren, the grandmother only tries to convince the criminal not to take her life. For the time before getting into this situation the grandmother seemed to be quite a social person which leads to the assumption that she develops to be an ironic character throughout the story, also having a dual personality concerning her attitude towards different persons in diverse situations. Focusing on the grandmother’s conscience it becomes obvious that she shows two different sides. Although she actually wants to travel to Tennessee she appears to also be real worried about travelling to Florida because she has read about The Misfit being a fugitive murderer in that region. â€Å"[She] couldn’t answer to [her] conscience†(p. 1) if she sent her own children near such danger. So here she appeals to her conscience being a truly worried person thinking of her grandchildren and family. But this conscience especially seems to fade at the end of the story. As soon as she realizes that it is The Misfit who surrounds her, she seems to completely forget her family members also being in danger. We will write a custom essay sample on A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Characterization of the Grandmothers Conscience specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Characterization of the Grandmothers Conscience specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Characterization of the Grandmothers Conscience specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer The grandmother only is interested in saving her own life by trying to convince the criminal not to shoot a lady like she was. (comp. p. 7ff. ) She explicitly appeals to him to save her life, not even begging for the rest of the family. This example demonstrates that her conscience may contradict in various situations. Although the grandmother believes in certain values she always tries to be seen in a better light than she actually is. She searches for the best way to profit. This becomes already obvious at the beginning of the story. Her granddaughter June characterizes her as someone who does not want to miss anything. (comp. p. 1) As the trip begins she insists on taking her cat along because she is afraid it might get hurt in anyway when she is gone. But the real reason is that she personally would really miss it. (comp. p. 1) At their stop at the Red Sammy’s Barbecue she gets involved into a conversation with Sam, the owner of the Barbecue, talking about better times in the past also getting along the topic regarding The Misfit. Both agree in that moment that nowadays â€Å"a good man is hard to find†(p. 4). When the family meets The Misfit at the accident location, the grandmother also immediately starts a conversation with him, trying to persuade him being a good man, although she knows him being a murderer, someone she would have never liked to meet in her life. Hence, she turns her statement which has been said before into another coherency to benefit from her statement. To finally conclude the grandmother turns out to be ironic in several ways. She is a talkative and dominant person in conversations but uses her attitude towards topics in a way to profit by them. On the one side she cares for her grandchildren, but on the other side shows them certain facets which contradict with her actual values. The most important contradiction which the grandmother contains is her credibility concerning her love towards her family. At the end it is only her life which she focusses on and hence, ignores her family.

Great Awakening, The essays

Great Awakening, The essays The Great Awakening was the first real event in America that did not include any other country. The Great Awakening was a revivalism of religion and the purpose of going to church. Many ministers in congregations of different religions caused the people of their churches to fall to their knees to obey God in fear of hell. These events led to the realization of the need to go to church in many of the colonists in the 1730s and 1740s. The Great Awakening began among Dutch settlers around New Brunswick in Northern New Jersey, in the 1720s. The growth of towns, the increase of commerce, and the expansion of overseas trading caused new distractions from church. It spread in the 1730s to the Congregationalists under Jonathan Edwards in the Connecticut valley, and to Presbyterian revivalists (who had come directly from Northern Ireland to eastern Pennsylvania and Southern New York). These Scottish-Irish carried the movement with them, wherever they settled, mostly along the frontier from Maine to Georgia (Garraty 95). In America, the Awakening signaled the coming of an encircling evangelicalism, which is the belief that the core of religious occurrence was the new birth, inspired by the preaching of the Word. It invigorated even as it divided churches (www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel02.html 1). One of the earliest of the revivalists to make a stir was Theodorus J. Frelinghuysen, a New Jersey preacher of the Dutch Reformed Church. He preached up and down the Raritan valley and other areas in that region. He preached a doctrine of hellfire and damnation. He worked his congregations into a fever of excitement. More conventional preachers of the Reformed Church objected to Frelinghuysens methods and by 1726 he had already brought about a split in the Reformed Church. (Wright 91-92). Gilbert Tennent also had a major influence on the Great Awakening. He led the Scottish-Irish Presbyterians. Gilbert Tennent h...

Argument papper draft #2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Argument papper draft #2 - Essay Example However, United Nations in 2000 asserts that there is variety in the average marital age difference across different cultures. For instance, in some African societies, the average difference in terms of age between married partners is three times that in most Western countries, revolving around 10 years in most cases. Moreover, 10 years appears to be the maximum acceptable difference on average for a romantic partner, particularly for women. This is because differences beyond 10 years are not seen as normative by most societies. Another way to explain men and women’s partner age preferences is to think of heterosexual relationships in social exchange terms. Social exchange theory proposes that how we feel about a given social interaction or relationship fundamentally depends upon the costs to be incurred and benefit associated with it. Basically, when rewards are more than the costs to be incurred in a relationship, we tend to feel good about it and will in most cases stay in it and vice versa. Conversely, an older man providing his resources for a young, attractive woman can be seen as a social exchange where he provides shelter, food, and security in exchange for sex with her bringing about an opportunity to procreate. Such an arrangement is likely to be seen as a favorable because it me ets important needs for both partners. Another explanation for men and women’s partner age preferences is by considering the social role theory which argues that the traditional division of labor between the sexes has resulted in women assuming the social role of providing domestic labor and men fulfilling the social role of providing. Thus leading women to look for financially stable men who are mostly older and men looking for younger women who look productive and attractive. The tendency for women to marry older men so as to have them provide for them is changing as more women are in the labor force as