Flannery O’Connor, in dealing with her recurrent setting of the post-Civil War South, once said that “[w]hile the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is certainly the most Christ-haunted.” In analyzing the representation of Christianity in two of her short stories — “Good Country People” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” — it becomes obvious that her characters’ religious affiliations are less spiritual than they are simply a means of obtaining something desired. However, the treatment of religion in these two stories is problematic. While the treatment of religion in “Good Country People” suggests that the expression of religious beliefs can be persuasive when dealing with others, in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” it suggests that the expression of religious beliefs can be entirely unpersuasive.
Flannery O’Connor was most well-known for writing stories about the South, stories that were generally placed into the genre of grotesque. Her stories most commonly deal with themes of religion, race, and class. O’Connor addressed these themes by way of her characters through pain, violence, and ridiculous behavior. A strict Roman Catholic woman, O’Connor commonly used irony and ambiguity in order to inflate the dysfunctional religious attitudes and behaviors of the people in the southern United States.
In “Good Country People,” persuasive religious expression is displayed by the character Manly Pointer. Manly approaches the Hopewell household under the guise of a Bible salesman. After convincing Mrs. Hopewell to allow him to share dinner with the family by pointing out that he was “just a country boy” (179), Manly persists to catch the eye of Hulga. Manly talks of his religious beliefs and devotion throughout their shared meal, saying that he wants “to devote [his] life to Chrustian service” (180) because of a heart condition that will likely shorten his lifespan. Hulga, who holds a Ph.D. in philosophy, sees Manly’s simple religious beliefs as a sign of ignorance, and she devises a plan to seduce Manly at a later meeting date so that she can turn the remorse he feels at being seduced into a “deeper meaning of life” (186). At their second meeting, Hulga and Manly walk through a nearby field and enter the loft of the barn. It is here that Hulga plans to seduce Manly. However, Manly, still playing the devoted religious country boy, asks Hulga to show him where her false leg connects. At first, Hulga refuses, but, later, “she decided that for the first time in her life she was face to face with real innocence” (192). Hulga removes her leg and glasses, and Manly opens one of his Bibles. To Hulga’s surprise, the Bible was simply a shell for a flask and a deck of cards. In the end, Manly steals Hulga’s false leg, leaving her stranded in the loft of the barn. Mrs. Hopewell and her servant see Manly walking past their house, and Mrs. Hopewell makes a comment about Manly’s simplicity, stating that “the world would be better off if we were all that simple” (196).
In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” unpersuasive religious expression is displayed at the end by the grandmother when the family encounters The Misfit, an escaped convict from the Federal Penitentiary. After the grandmother recognizes the murderer, she begins to resort to various schemes in order to convince him to let her family free. She begins by trying to convince The Misfit that he’s a good man and “not a bit common” (7). When this plan doesn’t work and she hears gunshots from the woods where The Misfit’s accomplices have just taken her son and grandson, she resorts to religious expression, asking The Misfit, “Do you ever pray?” (8). The Misfit replies that he is not a religious man, but the grandmother persists with this attempt at persuasion. Next she tells him that “Jesus would help you.” The Misfit’s associates then take the grandmother’s daughter-in-law and granddaughter to the same place in the woods, and the grandmother hears gunshots yet again. At this point, she abandons her religious tactics and begins to simply agree with The Misfit’s assertions. However, The Misfit still kills her in the end.
This ambiguous treatment of the persuasive nature of religious expression in O’Connor’s two short stories is problematic because of its inconsistency; however, it also makes a strong overall statement about the treatment of religion by these characters that were supposed to be caricatures of post-Civil War southerners. At the end of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” The Misfit states that the grandmother “would have been a good woman if somebody had been there to shoot her every minute of her life” (10). The grandmother only turned to religious expression and belief when her life depended on it, much in the same way that Manly simply held the façade of a religious devotee in order to trick Hulga into allowing him to steal her false leg. Both of these stories, then, have religious themes that support the O’Connor quote from the beginning of this essay. Neither character was “Christ-centered,” but they were both definitely conflicted by the common religious beliefs of their time.
Works Cited
O’Connor, Flannery. “Good Country People.”
—. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”
