Review: "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

Most of the time, I cannot stand family drama type stories... so thank goodness for the dark and intense ending. To be fair, because the Coen Brothers were mentioned in regards to Ms. O' Connor dark style, I pretty much saw the ending a mile away. I was actually better satisfied by Kafka's ending than O' Connor's. If I had gone into reading the story without any idea of what to expect, I may have been more surprised. The fact that The Misfit was mentioned so often gave the story away very early on. I knew that at least one of the main characters would have some kind of run in with The Misfit. So, I must say, I was a little disappointed. Also, I didn't understand what was the significance of the grandmother telling The Misfit that he was one of her own children. Was she just symbolic or was he really one of her children?

I liked the dialogue though. As I was reading it, I imagined everything to be similar to "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?", another Coen Brothers' movie. I'm not sure if that movie was mentioned in class or not, but considering the southern location and accents in the dialogue, the similarity was unavoidable for me. In fact, pretending that the story was in the world of "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" was one of the main reason I was able to actually get through the story, besides the fact that it was required reading. Specifically, I imagined The Misfit as looking exactly like the "The Devil" character in "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?".

Overall, I enjoyed the read. It was fairly interesting and the writing was decent. I'm looking to what else is in store.