ELA Blog Post for 12-8

In Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find", the story is dynamic and constantly moving, thrusting its characters quickly from their everyday life to a situation that pushes the limit of their character. [Despite this, The Grandmother's personality does not change throughout the story, instead it remains consistent while different occurrences reveal it to differing degrees to the reader]. This is shown in that, while she reacts to different situations in ways that may seem ever-changing, her two main traits, stubborn selfish manipulativeness and ignorance of the feelings of those around her,  remain consistent and dictate all of her actions. For example, while her desperate pleas with The Misfit to pray to Jesus, insistence he recognize he is more than a common man, and sudden revelation she is her mother may seem like a new development in her character, they reflect exactly her warnings of a murderer in Florida, lies about a hidden hatch in the house down the dirt road, and attempt to pretend she was injured to garner sympathy. In the same way, her persuasive speech to The Misfit despite it obviously having no effect is the same as in various points in the story, back to the very beginning when she first went on about Florida to Bailey despite his engagement in his newspaper and obvious disregard for what she was saying. So, while varying situations had short-term effects on her that could be misinterpreted as changes in character, she ultimately remained consistent in that, in the most literal sense, she would stop at nothing but death to get what she wanted.