True reality before Egypt

Blindness from the true reality

Things are not always what they appear to be.  There is a fine line between what things appear to be and what they actually are.  Reality is not always black and white. Each person has his or her own perspective and an opinion about what reality appears to be and what reality actually is. Even though a person may be physically blind that does not mean the person cannot see the world around them. In reality a bind person can see more than a person who has sight. People who can   physically see do not really open their eyes to the important things that really matter in life. As a opposed to blind people eyes are open to a more emotional insightful reality that people who have sight cannot see with their eyes open like the subtle things in life. This is shown in the real world and the literary world as well through the obstacles characters face due the blindness that they have suffered from because the appearance and reality of the world. Flannery O Conner uses blindness as a metaphor for people who cannot see the true reality of the world we live in because people get so caught up in the illusion of achieving their worldly desires that they cannot see the truth of the world that is right In front of their eyes.  This theme is expressed in---Flannery O Conner’s short stories’ “A Good Man is Hard to Find “,” The River “ and "The Circle of Fire”  through the actions of the characters and how they respond to the true reality of the world they live in.  

The grandmother applies the label “good” indiscriminately, blurring the definition of a “good man” until the label loses its meaning entirely. She first applies it to Red Sammy after he angrily complains of the general untrustworthiness of people. He asks her why he let two strangers charge their gasoline—he’s obviously been swindled—and the grandmother says he did it because he’s “a good man.” In this case, her definition of “good” seems to include gullibility, poor judgment, and blind faith, none of which are inherently “good.” She next applies the label “good” to the Misfit. After she recognizes him, she asks him whether he’d shoot a lady, although he never says that he wouldn’t. Because being a lady is such a significant part of what the grandmother considers moral, the Misfit’s answer proves that he doesn’t adhere to the same moral code as she does. The grandmother desperately calls him a good man, as though appealing to some kind of underlying value that the Misfit wouldn’t want to deny. Her definition of “good,” however, is skewed, resting almost entirely on her claim that he doesn’t have “common blood.”

 The grandmother’s wanton application of the label “good man” reveals that “good” doesn’t imply “moral” or “kind.” For the grandmother, a man is a “good man” if his values are aligned with her own. Red Sammy is “good” because he trusts people blindly and waxes nostalgic about more innocent times—both of which the grandmother can relate to. The Misfit is “good” because, she reasons, he won’t shoot a lady—a refusal that would be in keeping with her own moral code. Her assumption, of course, proves to be false. The only thing “good” about the Misfit is his consistency in living out his moral code of “no pleasure but meanness.”

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the grandmother and the Misfit are both recipients of grace, despite their many flaws, sins, and weaknesses. According to Christian theology, human beings are granted salvation through God’s grace, or favor, which God freely bestows on even the least likely recipients. In other words, God has the power to allow even bad people to go to heaven, which he does by granting them grace. The grandmother is an unlikely candidate for receiving grace. She lies to her grandchildren, manipulates her son, and harps constantly about the inadequacy of the present and superiority of the past. She has no self-awareness and seems she is blind, oblivious to the world around her. Certain of her own moral superiority, the grandmother believes that she is the right person to judge the goodness of others as well as the right person to instruct other people on how to live their lives. However, she herself has an inherent moral weakness. She instructs the Misfit to pray, for example, even though she herself is unable to formulate a coherent prayer. She changes her mind about Jesus’” rising from the dead as she grows more afraid of what will happen to her. "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!"After Bobby Lee and Hiram have murdered her whole family, The Grandmother says this to The Misfit in a moment of Grace. He has just explained why he has been unable to have faith in Jesus, and seeing him about to cry, she understands that he is a real person, not just someone of "good blood." She has mercy on him and forgives him for the deaths of her family, but when she reaches out to touch him, he immediately kills her.

. Both “bad” people in their own way, they are each unlikely—even undeserving—recipients of grace.

Grace, however, settles on them both, suggesting that even people like the grandmother and Misfit have the potential to be saved by God. The grandmother, moved by the Misfit’s wish to know for sure what Jesus did and didn’t do, experiences a moment of grace when her head momentarily clears and she exclaims, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” The Misfit isn’t literally the grandmother’s child; rather, this points to the fact that she realizes they are both human beings. Her comment seems inappropriate—even insane—given the circumstances, but this is actually the grandmother’s most lucid moment in the story. She has clarity and, more important, compassion. God has granted her grace just before she dies. The Misfit, too, is open to grace at this moment. Although he had claimed earlier that there was “no pleasure but meanness” in life, he now denies that there is any pleasure in life at all. Killing has ceased to bring him happiness, suggesting that he, too, may harbor the possibility to change.

 The grandmother’s hat, which she wears for the sole purpose of showing that she is a lady, represents her misguided moral code. When the grandmother prepares for the car trip with the family, she dresses up to be prepared for a car accident so that anyone seeing her dead body would know that she’d been a lady. The grandmother seems to be entirely unconcerned with the fact that she’s dead in this scenario and oblivious to the fact that other people—including her three grandchildren—would have probably died as well. For the grandmother, the only thing that matters is her standing as a lady, a ridiculous concern that reveals her selfishness and flimsy moral conviction. When the grandmother does become involved in a car accident, the hat—like her moral convictions—falls apart. After she is thrown from the car and the family is facing the Misfit, the brim of the hat falls off. She drops the broken hat as her self-conception as a lady dissolves.

The Grace of God is the most important theme in this story. Grace is misinterpreted by Mr. Paradise and the young boy, Harry. Mr. Paradise has unrealistic expectations of Bevil the preacher, attacking him for not being able to perform any real miracles. Harry, having been brought up without religion, fails to understand Bevel’s preaching’s and drowns himself in the River. However, he achieves Grace in death, since he chooses to strive for salvation rather than live in the atheistic household with his parents.

Mrs. Connin is compared to a skeleton three times: while she looms in the doorway waiting for Harry to be ready to leave in the morning, she is described as "a speckled skeleton;" as she naps in the taxi on the way to her house at the beginning of the story, "she began to whistle and blow like a musical skeleton;" and when she realizes that Harry's parents have no faith at all as she drops him back off at home, "Mrs. Connin stood a second, staring into the room, with a skeleton's appearance of seeing everything." This description could imply that she is naked before God, ready to be saved and open to Grace, or it could be interpreted as a foreshadowing of Harry's death at the end of the story, brought on by her suggestion of Grace. As she leads her own children and Harry to the healing, "they looked like the skeleton of an old boat with two pointed ends, sailing slowly on the edge of the highway."

In contrast, other characters are compared to animals through similes. Harry is described as "mute and patient, like an old sheep waiting to be let out." Mrs. Connin's children's ears twitch slightly, like those of anxious animals, as they debate whether to abuse Harry. This seems to signify their readiness to be herded toward God by believers like Mrs. Connin. But when Mr. Paradise is compared to an animal at the end of the story, it signifies that he is still lost to God; he doesn't understand the meaning of Harry's suicide and has not achieved Grace. Harry hears a shout and turns his head to see, "something like a giant pig bounding after him." Mr. Paradise is You count now. You didn't even count before." (168)These are the words the preacher says to Harry after he has been baptized in the river. Later that night, Harry recounts them to his intoxicated mother as she leans over him before he goes to sleep. He does not feel like he "counts" in the apartment where he lives and has been raised; his parents usually ignore him and have not raised him as a Christian. For this reason, he misinterprets the preacher's words about the river leading to the Kingdom of Christ, and purposefully drowns himself to get there. As far away from Grace as the pig that broke free at Mrs. Connin's house the previous day.

The symbol of the sun is used to represent Christian faith: its reflection is "set like a diamond" in the river where Harry is baptized. The personification of the sun enforces the idea that hope and faith overcome the darkness of sin and lack of faith. As Mrs. Connin leads her own children and Harry to the healing at the river, "The white Sunday sun followed at a little distance, climbing fast through a scum of gray cloud as if it meant to overtake them." When Bevel the preacher tells Harry that after he is baptized he will "count," Harry looks over his shoulder "at the pieces of the white sun scattered in the river." When Harry wakes up in his parents' apartment, "The sun came in palely, stained gray by the glass" of the window; it cannot shine brightly in that home because his parents have no faith. In contrast, as he follows the path he and Mrs. Connin took the day before to return to the river, "The sun was pale yellow and high and hot."

As in many of Flannery O'Connor's stories, the sky is an important symbol: here, it represents openness to faith. As Bevel preaches in the river, his eyes follow the paths of two birds. They eventually settle "in the top of the highest pine and sat hunch-shouldered as if they were supporting the sky." When Harry tells the preacher that his name is also Bevel, jokingly, the preacher's face is "rigid and his narrow gray eyes reflected the almost colorless sky," in this moment before Harry's baptism. But when he is displeased, after Harry tells him that his mother is in fact only suffering from a hangover, "the sky appeared to darken in his eyes." As Harry runs into the river to drown himself, "The sky was a clear pale blue, all in one piece - except for the hole the sun made - and fringed around the bottom with treetops." Here, the sky represents Harry's mentality: he is focused and determined, and the only thought in his mind is faith, represented by the sun.

Paragraph on the blindness in the circle of fire how Mrs. Hopewell was blind to the boys burning the house down

Conclusion