I think my classmate Melanie was spot on, Flannery O’Connor’s
short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was rightfully published in the New
Yorker. Sure, it may have a religious undertone and have grotesque twists and
turns, but that’s just the kind of exposure The New Yorker needs. Educate and humor
northerners with stories from or of the south, to give them another perspective
of their nation and its many cultures. And if nothing else, at least those who
read it can be thankful its fiction, have something else to poke fun at, and feel
blessed that they do not live in the south.
Personally I haven’t had any real exposure to The New
Yorker, all I can assume is that fancy-feeling, busy people who ride the subway
to their super boring jobs read it. And hey, I feel like if Tim Gautreaux’s “Idols”
can be there, so can “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Obviously the two stories are
different, really different, but they basically cover the same major areas.
For one, O’Connor’s had evident, blatant evilness that was
conveyed though the Misfit and his gang of murderers, and some would even argue
that Grandma was evil.. haha! In Gautreaux’s it wasn’t so much of an outward
evil, but an evil within Julian’s character and conveyed through his selfish
demeanor. Different in that aspect, but the same in that both main characters shared
a lack of community. The grandma and Julian were loners. Completely alone. The
grandma could not connect with her family at all, and Julian could not connect
with anyone. In the end each of them were a l o n e. Grandma died, and a part
of Julian did when his house, his last future prospect, was destroyed.
Spearheaded by the lack of community for each character was
the lack of understanding of each character. Not only were the readers
blindsided by each character- (we were given no background for either
character, therefore we could not properly understand their positionality)- the
minor characters within the story just could not communicate with them. In
class we straight up just said that Julian was one of those weirdos that is all
alone because he cannot get along with anyone, and that’s really just it. He
was never graceful with people, he always thought of himself as a god. The
grandma on the other hand was a little different- she was from another
generation, and we did see her engaging with the truck station
employee/customer that was around her age, but she just could not along with
her son and his family. But she too was someone who thought she was better than
everyone around her.
Lastly, they are both set in the south. That’s the grandest
likeness that binds the two short stories and it really does make them an even
greater story to tell because I do not think that you could create the nature
of the grandma and the weirdo in their proper lighting without it being set in
the old, dark, south.
