Violence as the Road to Transformation: O'Connor's “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
Resource
NTU Studies in Language and Literature, 13, 059-097
Journal
NTU Studies in Language and Literature
Journal Issue
13
Pages
059-097
Date Issued
2004-06
Date
2004-06
Author(s)
Abstract
This paper attempts to explicate the function of violence and its relation to the possible epiphany and transformation trajectory in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” I would first remodel the Greimassian semiotic method to analyze the expressions and functions of violence in the narrative, especially, in the concepts, behaviors and responses of the two main characters—the grandmother and The Misfit. I would argue that, in this story, the function of violence helps build up a discrete trajectory of passion modes and delineate a possible mental transformation of the two main characters. Secondly, the grandmother’s possible transformation process after the car accident and the following violent massacre of the Bailey family will be discussed. Finally, I would take the violent performance in O’Connor’s story as a strategic application, which O’Connor adopts to help reveal the grandmother’s and the Misfit’s concepts constructed loosely upon a layer of culturally set religious and secular beliefs. This culturally embedded reality (which mistakes manners as morals and faith) incurs the very destruction of its groundwork, dilutes the violence resulted from social maladjustment, and furthermore, diminishes the shock behind the downfall of a family.
Subjects
歐康諾
好人難尋
葛萊瑪
符號學
敘事
轉換歷程
暴力
Flannery O'Connor
A good man is hard to find
A. J. Greimas
Semiotics
Narrative
Transformation trajectory
Violence
SDGs
Type
journal article
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
0013_200406_3.pdf
Size
870.3 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):a97adf4e693f442fb200966591418b6c