Is There Anyone Else Besides Me English Literature Essay
In Flannery O’Connor ‘s “ A Good Man Is Difficult to Find ” the individual character that persists throughout the narrative is the Grandmother. O’Connor ‘s word picture of the grandma as a ego centered adult female who lives in the past and is manipulative in the manner she interacts with the remainder of her household. The grandma is depicted as person who is unhappy with her life in the current sense and wants to return to her life as it was long earlier when everything seemed to be happy, dressed decently in a navy blue frock with white points on it, white baseball mitts with a large black bag to conceal the household cat she dishonestly sneaks into the auto of which she knows that her boy, Bailey, “ did n’t wish to get at a motel with a cat ” ( O’Connor 445 ) .
The grandma manipulates her household by stating whatever it will take for her to acquire her manner no affair what anyone else may believe, this is demonstrated early on in the narrative by her finding to convert the household to alter their holiday programs from going to Florida and alternatively to Tennessee. After reading in the newspaper about a chap called the Misfit who has escaped from the Federal Penitentiary, she seizes on the chance at trying to pull strings Bailey to go to Tennessee alternatively of Florida by seeking to do him experience guilty in respects to the safety of the kids by saying “ I would n’t take my kids in any way with a condemnable like that aloose in it. I could n’t reply my scruples if I Did ” ( O’Connor 445 ) , when this does n’t work on her boy she so attempts to carry the kids ‘s female parent who does n’t look to even hear her nevertheless the immature 8 twelvemonth old boy, John Wesley, does hear her and asks her if she does n’t desire to travel why do n’t she merely remain place. After a back and forth conversation between the grandma and the 2 immature childs, the grandma decides that she will travel along on the trip where she begins more misrepresentation in order to fulfill her ain wants. She dresses in a navy blue frock and pins a sachet on it, as if she knew this would be her last trip, “ In instance of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the main road would cognize at one time she was a lady ” . ( O’Connor 446 )
Throughout the trip the grandma repeatedly relives the yesteryear as she believes to hold known it, she attempts to state everyone what to make, teaching Bailey that the velocity bound was 55 stat mis per hr, stating the kids that they do n’t hold good manners and that in her clip “ kids were respectful of their native provinces and their parents and everything else ” ( O’Connor 446 ) . The grandma exposes her prejudiced ego when she references the small negro kid as a pinkaninny and explains to the childs that “ Small niggas in the state do n’t hold things like we do ” ( O’Connor 446 ) , once more here she attempts to force her thoughts onto her grandchildren. Throughout their journey the grandma manages to talk as though she has declinations of her life as it is and that she is losing something, her thought of how much better off she would hold been had she married Mr. Teagarden merely because he had invested in Coca-Cola, and blames other people for anything that does n’t travel her manner throughout her life.
As the trip progresses the grandma decides that she wanted to re-visit an old plantation she remembers from her yesteryear, in the attempts to convert Bailey to detour to it she describes the house to the kids striking their wonder by adding a tone of enigma by lying to the kids of a secret panel bing in the house where “ all the household Ag was hidden ” ( O’Connor 448 ) and was ne’er found. The grandma knows this is a prevarication, she knows this old house does n’t be in Georgia but Tennessee, it ‘s her selfish grounds of seeing an old house that she offers the thought that seeing an old house “ would be really educational for them ” ( O’Connor 449 ) . Rather than state Bailey of this she allows him to drive farther down the route finally clashing the paper over the kitty basket doing the pool to leap onto Bailey galvanizing him and doing the accident the immature kids would see as an escapade and would put them into injury ‘s manner on the side of the soil route.
Throughout the narrative the grandma remains self centered, carefully stretching the truth and lying to acquire what she can out of any state of affairs that will profit herself non so much as those around her. On the side of the route after the accident is where the grandma and the Misfit will eventually run into, she will try to utilize her same manipulative tactics on him nevertheless he does n’t let it to rock him. The grandma does n’t of all time truly accept the fact that the Misfit is meaning on killing them, even after she hears several gunfires coming from the forests she continues to implore merely for herself, seeking to convert the Misfit that he is a good individual, consumed by her ain fright apparently incognizant that her full household has been shot dead. For a minute the grandma is left speechless for the first clip in the narrative, “ She opened and closed her oral cavity several times before anything came out ” ( O’Connor 454 ) . It was at the minute where she realizes that the Misfit is traveling to kill her that her caput clears for an blink of an eye as she recognizes “ the affinity to the Misfit as a fellow evildoer ” ( McDermott ) and she tries a ineffectual concluding clip to pull strings him by stating him “ Why your 1 of my babes ” ( O’Connor 455 ) , making out to touch him would be the terminal of the last prevarication the grandma would state. The grandma ‘s life is brought to a tragic terminal possibly ne’er recognizing that the things closest to her had besides met a tragic terminal due to her selfishness and fallacious tactics.
