Setting

Physical setting

The short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor starts on the evening before the family leaves for Florida and ends the next afternoon. The events take place in America. The story references elements of popular culture such as “The Tennessee Waltz” (l. 132), which was first released in 1948, Coca-Cola (l. 114), and the movie “Gone With the Wind” (l. 92), which was released in 1939. Also, the grandmother refers to African Americans using expressions such as “pickaninny” (l. 74) and “niggers” (l. 79). While these words are considered racist nowadays, they were accepted during the 1950’s. All this seems to suggest that the events take place around the beginning of the 1950s.

The most important physical setting in the story is the isolated dirt road outside of Toombsboro, where the family meets the Misfit and his accomplices. The woods where most of the family is shot play a symbolic part in the story.

The plantation house the grandmother remembers and its imaginary treasure are also important on a symbolic level. For the grandmother, they represent an ideal era that she longs to return to (when, implicitly, she believes good men were easy to find).

Social setting

Various topics are explored in the social setting. The most important one is that of religion and morality and the contradictory views that the two central characters hold regarding those aspects. The story also touches on the issu...