Flannery O'Connor: Crafting Irony and Foreshadowing in Her Tales - Essay Sample

Introduction

The author Flannery O'Connor is a remarkable author who knows to deliver rich tales. Stories that concisely and precisely employs abundant use of irony and foreshadowing. In a glimpse, to foreshadow is to provide a hint of the upcoming event, while irony, on the other hand, is the contradiction between what takes place and what is expected to take place(Garmendia, 166). In her two amazing stories, A Good Man is Hard to find, and everything that rises must converge, O'Connor uses a good set of irony and foreshadowing to deliver her messages. She creates a tense reading atmosphere and predicts how the story may probably end. As her stories progress, it is possible to know the outcome due to the devices O'Connor remarkably uses. The use of this technique makes it extremely hard to stop reading his stories. The plot grows more interesting with every sentence creating a sharp image of the characters on the reader's mind. They play the central role of creating an epic experience of both her characters and readers and also add a fantastic twist to her plot throughout the entire tale.

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In the story, a good man is hard to find, the story mainly focuses on two characters, the grandmother who is exceptionally self-centered and kind to herself and the Misfit, a man who is considered quite ingenious. It is the story of the grandmother, in which the evidence highlights the variations in her superficial self and the real character she portrays in the story as events unfold. With these two contradicting personas that define the grandmother, the success of the story relies on the use of foreshadowing and irony that the author O'Connor uses, which play on the progressive character development of the grandmother.

Early in the first paragraph, when foreshadowing first reveals it's self is when the grandmother tries to point out to Bailey a newspaper article about a notorious individual, "the Misfit" who has managed to escape the prison and his on his route to Florida. She tries very hard to discourage Barley from taking her family there by saying she would never without any valid reason take her children in any direction with a dangerous criminal at loose. By bringing the name of the convict to the picture, O'Connor brings a strong element of trepidation in the plot of the story. Bailey seems to give a deaf ear to the words of his mother, to contradict the reader's instincts of the chance that that Barley may have an encounter with the Misfit are less, the grandmother's statement is also masked with irony in a sense that she was responsible for letting his son lead his grandchildren in the direction of their demise. She told Barley, "yes, and what will be your next action this fellow, the Misfit gets you" (1042). A strong possibility of one way or the other meeting with the miscreant the Misfit seems promised and inevitable. It's convincing that the O'Connor had true intentions of also use of irony in this innocent comment by the grandmother because her objections to the future possibility of the meeting also portray premonition. Conscience later reveals itself when she realizes that the vast plantation is not in Georgia, but Tennessee and yet decides to say no word about it. The irony is also undeniable when John Wesley told his grandmother if she doesn't want to go to Florida because of her chance to just stay at home. The irony is that if she had stayed at home, they would have escaped the tragedy that awaited them. Two more points reveal themselves concerning the grandmother, O'Connor writes that the grandmother didn't have the intention of leaving the cat alone in the house for three days because the cat will at some point become lonely and miss the grandmother and was concerned that the cat if left alone, may brush herself in one of the burners and accidentally burn himself(1043). She also states that, in the way she is dressed up," in case of an occurrence an untimely accident, anyone seeing her lying helplessly on the highway will immediately know that she was a woman" (1043). These two sentences are evident enough to show the use of foreshadowing by O'Connor throughout the entire story.

Another scenario where foreshadow and irony reveal themselves is when the family stopped at Red Sammy's BBQ to have a quick lunch, Red Sammy and the grandmother engage in a conversation were they talked over their shared values and rebuked individual attitudes. Despite the strong evidence that Red Sammy does not look like a good man, he speaks very rudely and harshly about his beloved wife in front of people he doesn't even know. Despite all this, he still claims to know the things that make and does not make a man enjoyable. He explains to the grandmother that these days, it's tough to know who to trust. The grandmother responds by saying that people this day are not lovely like they used to be. This scenario shows strong evidence of foreshadowing of the events that will happen later with the Misfit and his cronies. One expects that anyone stopping by the car that has just been involved in a gruesome accident is doing so to offer some kind of assistance to the affected family, but this is not the case; the family has little trust on the men who stop by, and those men are by any chance not good.

Another work that Flannery O'Connor utilizes the use of irony and foreshadowing is in her book, 'everything that rises must converge.' For instance, when the characters Julian and his mother start walking towards the bus stop at the beginning of the story, the words used at the beginning foreshadows the untimely death of his mother that's about to happen, in the statement "The sky was a dying violet" shows that the mother's time to leave has come.

In the scenario were the all-white look of the bus changes and an African American fellow boards the now about to move the bus, the author stated that the bus immediately stopped with a sudden jerk and shook him from his comfortable medication. The rapid change of the bus composition from entirely having only white to a more racially acceptable mix of the passengers signifies the difference in southern society. The mother in this part of the story plot found to have a desire to return to segregation, but the way the bus comes to an immediate stop and shakes Julian out of his comfort zone shows how societal change is occurring very first. These techniques used by the author show that the change will be very volatile and will shake the white people out of their complacency, and the sudden lurch of the moving bus foreshadows the mother's horrible stroke as the story ends (367).

Connor present Julian presents Julian as he evil character in the story which shows close similarity to the Misfit in the novel 'a good man is hard to find.' the idea that the black lady is also wearing the same hideous hat as the rest shows that there is indeed a mixing of culture, showing that things are changing very first. The lady on the bus seems to have a very high attitude on the bus, although Julian's mother does not notice this at first. She later realizes this when she tried to give the child a penny, and the pissed-off black lady tries to hit her with her purse, knocking the mother down. Conor portrays the aspect of evil to foreshadow that a tragedy was coming sooner or later. After this horrible incident, Julian feels more superior to his mother until she arrives at a realization that her mother is having a stroke. The mother passes away shortly after being knocked down by the black woman. Julian, at this stage, become very regretful and sorrowful when he realizes what has just happened (101).

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is very evident in the energetic utilization of foreshadowing and irony in his two short stories by Flannery O'Connor. The critique of spiritual versus evil is very similar to these two short stories. These two aspects used by the author make the reader becomes more glued to the story, therefore increasing the reading experience.

Works Cited

'CONNOR, FLANNERY. Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories. S.l.: MARINER BOOKS, 2019. Print.

O'Connor, Flannery. Three by Flannery O'Connor: Wise Blood, The Violent Bear It Away, Everything That Rises Must Converge. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc, 1997. Print.

Brightkite. (n.d.). Irony And Foreshadowing In Flannery O'connor's A Good Man Is Hard To Find. Retrieved from https://brightkite.com/essay-on/irony-and-foreshadowing-in-flannery-o-connor-s-a-great-man-is-hard-to-get

Garmendia, Joana. Irony. , 2018. Print.