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It is somewhat hard to know how to present a story as totally polarizing as "A great Man is Hard to discover." Many people today think that it's a cynical story, uncompromising in the way it brings out human pettiness and manipulation. Others think it's a uproarious black humor--such as a movie by the Coen Bros or some twisted R.

Crumb comicbook.
Still others think that it's an uplifting depiction of the mystical ways God works through human beings over and over their own wills.
However you decide to specify "A great Man Is difficult To Find"--and we generally define it as "all of the above"--odds are fairly good that you're going to be discounted (or should we say scarred?)

The set up: a household (dotty grandma, bratty children, mad cat) embark on a road trip to Florida. Additionally, the grownups are somewhat nervous--and also a bit titillated--to know that a dangerous murderer named The Misfit has escaped from the penitentiary and can also be headed to the Sunshine State.

We are not going to give you all of the details about what happens when the family gets dropped on a disused back road...however we can let you know that it's frankly disturbing.

The naysayers discovered them consistently grotesque in their depiction of debased, gruesome (and generally unsympathetic) characters along with their glorious displays of violence or cruelty. "A great Man is tough to Find"--that can be O'Connor's most popular story--often stood in the middle of discussion.
O'Connor, however, saw all of her fiction--such as this story--as realistic, demandingly unsentimental, but ultimately optimistic. Her inspiration as a writer came out of a deeply felt faith in Roman Catholicism, which she maintained informed all of her stories.

A recurrent theme during her writings was the action of divine grace from the horribly dumb, often revolting, and normally funny universe of human beings. And this theme is out in force in "A great Man is Hard to discover."

This story affords possibly the best place to start in researching the work of O'Connor--after all, it was the 1955 collection A Good Man is tough to Find and Other Stories that created Flannery O'Connor as a significant voice in American literature, plus a contemporary master of the brief story.

Can you despise it? That is as difficult to say as a fantastic person is to locate--it really depends on your worldview and the strength of your stomach.

However, what's not impossible to determine is this truth: you're not going to forget "A great Person To Locate" anytime soon.

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