Flannery O’ Conner’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

In Flannery O’ Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” a typical Georgia family go on vacation to Florida, but are murdered by an escaped convict named “The Misfit. In the following quote the protagonist explains why he calls himself “The Misfit.”

Jesus thrown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except he hadn’t committed any crime and they could prove I committed one because they had the papers on me…of course…they never shown me my papers. That’s why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it . Then you’ll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you’ll have something to prove you ain’t been treated right.

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Swift Misanthrope or Humanitarian

One of the most important literary lessons one can learn from “Gulliver’s Travels” is the separation of protagonist, narrator and author. Although some times these three personalities blend into one many times they are two or three separate personalities. For example Shelly’s “Frankenstein” separates the author from the narrator and protagonist, although the protagonist is the narrator he does not know what is going to happen, just what has. Atwood’s “Happy Endings” is narrated by the author with the protagonists (although it is a stretch to call them that) are powerless. By contrast Alcott’s “I Know Why A Caged Bird Sings” combines the narrator, protagonist and the author into one single personality. An even more important part of this is how much of the author pervades the narrator and protagonist?

For “Gulliver’s Travels” it is hard to say this or that is the authors feeling or this is definitely the way the author thinks because Swift allows Gulliver to act insane and say some quite…er insane things.

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