A Good Man Is Hard To Find/ The Storm Essay, Research Paper

Of the two stories I read, one being The Storm by Kate Chopin and the other being A

Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O’Connor, I found that each had characters with moral

dilemmas. In both, the setting played a role in these dilemmas but in different ways. In The

Storm, the bad weather was the set-off to and unpredicted intimacy while in A Good Man Is Hard

To Find, the setting seems to be focused around a family’s vacation and their encounter with a

criminal. In the following paragraphs, I will go on to explain how certain characters have moral

dilemmas and how the setting helps to support my interpretations.

The Storm is based around a woman by the name of Calixta who is left home alone while

a threatening storm blows up suddenly. Her husband and son are stranded at a local store until

the weather calms down. While she is preparing for the worst, a man visitor appears at her

doorstep needing a place of shelter. This man turns out to be an old sweetheart of hers, Alcee.

As the story goes on, Calixta and Alcee, unleash themselves to passion once again and he is gone

as quickly as he got there.

In this particular story, I felt that Calixta’s moral dilemma is the fact that while she is

committing this sin of betrayal, she does not think once of her husband. If she feels that having an

intimate relationship behind her husband’s back is natural, then why is she hiding it from him?

Having morals is to believe in something and to believe in them so strongly that you do not fear

rejection because of them. Calixta obviously does not feel that her husband should know about

the affair, but at the same time, she feels sexual relations are natural. To me, Calixta is confused

with the real definition of morals.

In the story A Good Man Is Hard To Find, a family is off on a vacation to Tennessee. In

the midst of their journey they are encountered by a wanted criminal, The Misfit. In brief

summary, the grandmother leads the rest of the family down a dirt road that she has mistaken for

a road she used to live on. While driving down this road, they flip the car over in a ditch. At this

point they are confronted by The Misfit who has witnessed this accident. The setting in this story

began playing a big part a while before when the grandmother was alerting the family of the

known Misfit being on the loose. At this point I interpreted that later in the story, the family

would encounter this man. On the scene of the accident, I really came to terms with how troubled

this Misfit character really is. Upon arrival of the scene, The Misfit instantly has the father taken

in the woods and killed. Next were the mother and kids. By this time only the grandmother and

the Misfit remain. Here, the grandmother is tries to reason with this crazy man but he is not

willing to listen. Next, she tries to make him pray, to trust in God. At this point, the Misfit goes

into detail about his life. He feels that everything he has ever done in his life has been considered

wrong whether it was or not. He believes that Jesus threw everything off balance when He raised

people from the dead.

The Misfit’s moral dilemma is the fact that he thinks he is a misfit for life, that he can do

no good. He feels he will be punished for good or bad deeds. He can not seem to find a way out

and he is not willing to listen to otherwise.

In both stories the setting is a prediction to the author’s purpose and the plot of the

piece. The Storm’s setting seemed a little more prominent than A Good Man Is Hard To Find,

but with a bit of interpretation and thought, the reader is able to see how the setting is foreseeing

the

story’s main purpose. Calixta and the Misfit each have a moral dilemma and each of them deal

with it in their own way. Calixta simply goes on with her normal duties and the Misfit kills the

family. In today’s society, these conclusions seem to be similar in the sense that every person

deals with their dilemmas in a different way depending on what kind of background they have and

what type of environment they live in.