The story A Good Man Is Hard to Find is deeply rooted in rural South America. The family in the tale travels by car through the region. The grandmother was not prepared for the dawn to be so dark. As they make their way from Georgia to Florida, the characters are acquainted with the setting. Red clay hills alongside the road are just one example of how the protagonist describes the landscape (O'Connor, 342). There is a lot of regional flavor on the route, including former plantations. They make a pit halt at Red Sammy's house, which has a long, dark room, for food. The timing of the story is quite interesting as the family leaves home early in the morning and depart from Red Sammy’s in the hot afternoon to continue their journey. The setting also shows decay by the fact that the children are not proud of the State of Georgia unlike their grandmother. As they drive further, they pass a large cotton field which has five or six graves at the middle (O’Connor, 346). This scene creates fear. The main character suggests that they visit a house which she is not so sure about the location. However, this leads to an accident in a ditch. She later recalls that the house is in Tennessee which is quite far from that location.
They see a car which moves slowly and is big and black in color. The car is battered and hearse like. The misfit is in the car with two other men. She had read about him in the newspaper and they had talked about him at Red Sammy’s earlier that day. He is a terrifying killer who had escaped prison creating fear in the setting. When the grandmother is alone with the misfit, she loses her voice, the environment is portrayed as cloudless with no sun either thus creating tension (O’Connor, 349). Touching the misfit on the shoulder makes him spring back like he had been bitten by a snake and he shoots her thrice. The author uses the setting to predict the tragedy that happens to the main character at the end of the story.
Work cited
O’Connor, Flannery. "Good Country People:[Selections from the short story]." Academic Medicine 91.3 (2016): 352.
