Question

Which statement best describes how the theme of good vs. evil interacts with the theme of decaying southern culture in O'Connor's short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find"? The Misfit in the story seems evil at first, but turns out to be good, because he kills the grandmother, who is the true evil character in the story.
The Misfit is an outcast in the South because he has been tossed around from prison to prison, where he has learned skills to become more evil
.The grandmother represents old southern culture in the story, because she is racist, selfish and evil but appears to be a good southern lady on the outside.
The grandmother's selfishness is evil because it gets her family killed, but there is a glimmer of hope at the end of the story suggesting that southern culture is improving.

Answer 1

The correct answer is "The grandmother represents old southern culture in the story because she is racist, selfish and evil but appears to be a good southern lady on the outside". "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," first published in 1953, is one of the most Flannery O'Connor's famous stories. O'Connor was a staunch Catholic, and like most of her stories, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" are about good and evil and the possibility of divine grace. The grandmother gives great importance to being "a lady," and her ideas about what that means reflect an old-fashioned, somewhat upper-crust Southern mindset. All end up in her to associate being "good" with coming from a respectable family and behaving like a member of her social class.