A Good Man is Hard to Find - Q1 & Q2

“A Good Man is Hard to Find”

Question #1. Having reviewed the lecture on O’Connor, explain why you think recognizing and understanding the concept of the grotesque is important to understand and more fully appreciate the texts.

- Implementation of the concept of the grotesque to literacy could be an interesting practice for both writers and readers as the practice itself will give a more dramatic sense to each moment of the scene in where the theme necessarily needs to come out in a more spectacular manner. What the grotesque impacts really hard on the readers is that it brings out “unusual” situation, which is not supposed to be seen or done in reality in terms of following human morality or consciousness, or may by major beliefs (especially Christianity in this case), and the unusual situation hits really hard on the readers as if intended to assert that it cannot even be actually unusual if the view of the majority is totally inverted to the other way, which could be immoral in the most cases. However, I believe that it is also important to look at the other side of such a violent side of human because it is always wide-open possible to happen regardless of the possibility that might oppress the purpose of using the grotesque. To me, implementation of the grotesque is like standing on the minority’s side rather than standing on the majority’s side to get an advantage for the argument to win. The truth is that everything that human could think of is potentially already ready to happen in reality whether it is good or bad. And then, justifying the definitions of the goodness and the badness would be another big argument subsequently.

Question #2. Do you think the grotesque elements present in either or both stories makes the characters more or less sympathetic? Do you find them alienating, or do they help render the characters more fully human and understandable?

- Honestly, I was very shocked at the end of the story, just like the most of readers, even though I intended not to be shocked in external appearance, and I definitely felt the power of implementation of the grotesque. To respond to the question, I would say that the grotesque elements present in the story affected the characters more sympathetic, in my words to more specifically say: more understandable. Whenever I read a story, I become such an objective person, who really does not stand on or support any character as to maintain the balance the importance of the roles of the characters. And what the grotesque impacted on me was about defining the possibility of things that should not happen according to following the majority’s hopes or beliefs. I’m not just saying that grotesque is an excellent method in literacy because I personally more prefer odd situations than ordinary atmosphere, but when I realized that the grandmother and her family’s comedic mood turned out to be like an horror, I felt sorry for her and her family, but honestly I did not feel any bad about what Misfit stated at the end, related to the argument of the belief’s of Christianity. As a Christian, I might feel some disagreement with his statement, but I also can understand what Misfit said because that is what he believes in. What I felt after I read the discussions about this story is that the standard of judgement cannot solely be one-sided upon a certain belief or any hope of majority. Being recognized not to be a good one by the majority cannot hide the fact that everybody can do the bad thing in any moment during their life time, even unintentionally. The only thing that I felt sorry about the character-Misfit is that he looks very passive to me even though all of his actions seemed to be very active, pretending to lead the story, due to his blaming upon his past, which makes him go backward to his miserable early life and maintain it though the present, even willing to continue to the future without realizing now and taking an action to find an agreement point for his sadness with the reality. This is what I comprehensively had in my mind after reading.