Our Sweet Hypocritical Grandmother by Kyra Moore

“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Conner I would argue was undoubtedly one of the most context heavy stories that we have read in this class thus far. I would also argue that it is the most intriguing story that we have read as I feel it has no clear or concise moral theme. She addresses a number of topics such as our prison system and its effects on it inhabitants, family dynamics and Christianity. Although she alluded to a number of concepts, the one that stuck with me the most is the concept of Christianity. O’Conner used the character of the grandmother and her persona in the story to speak on, or allude to, a number of concepts as it pertains to Christianity such as hypocrisy and the use of the religion.

In researching the personal life of Miss O’Conner, I found that her and her family were devout practicing Catholics. With this being said, this leads me to believe that she may be speaking of accounts that may be specific to her interactions with Christians and Christianity.

I actually primarily read this story in a college credit English course in high school. It is not until I was forced to further look at the literary work with an analytical eye that I noticed what O’Conner could have been saying about Christianity. The prominent character that can be associated with Christianity in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is the grandmother.

Within the work, we are not aware that the grandmother is a Christian at all in the beginning of the story. Ironically, when the reader is fully aware of the religion of the grandmother is when she is in a high anxiety situation such as her looking face to face with death. In fact, we are made aware numerous times that she is immensely concerned with her appearance being “lady-like” before we are aware of the religion that she practices. O’Conner even goes as far as to say in the beginning of the story, “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” Ironically enough, as we see in the story, it is not her appearance or apparel that she uses to try to bring her out of a fate of death but it is her religion that she uses as an agent. When the grandmother realizes that she may be subject to death, she says things to the Misfit such as “If you would pray, Jesus would help you” and “that’s when you should have started to pray,” speaking of a particular time in the Misift’s life. Another time when the grandmother could not think of anything else to say when faced with adversity in the story she said, “pray, pray, pray.”

I think this is the phenomenon that O’Conner was trying to bring awareness to- the fact of putting Christians portraying themselves in a prominent manner but puts their religion on the backburner until it’s convenient for them. This is exactly the hypocrisy that we see in the grandmother, she only practices her religion primarily when she is faced with adversity.

Overall, in this story we can take a number of different angles as it pertains to Christianity, as O’Conner designed it to be, but the concept of hypocrisy and backburner Christianity is what stood out to me most. It also had a substantial amount of evidence to support the claim. In researching O’Conner and analyzing this literary work of hers, it entices me to read what other claims does she make throughout her works.