A fatal confrontation

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             Character description and foreshadowing are vital elements of a story. Flannery O"Connor utilizes these elements of literature vividly in this short work of fiction. Flannery O"Connor's " A Good Man is Hard to Find" tells a tale of a family's fatal confrontations with The Misfit, and escaped serial killer. The characters and unique use of foreshadowing of this dreary story are elements of a story waiting to unfold.
             The prominent character of this short story is the grandmother. She holds many aspects of a real human making her the most developed and rounded character in this story. This character is one who lingers in the past. She doesn't value her life as it is, but glorifies what it was like long ago when she lived through colored glasses (Coles 67). "In my time, children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then" (O"Connor 406). This nostalgia for the past stops time in her mind and lets her revert to a better day. .
             Also, while in the car with her family, the grandmother excites herself by telling stories of young, handsome men courting her then younger self. She tells of a man dying wealthy and explains that she could have been comfortable if she would have wed him. This tale shows that the grandmother wishes to change her past. Remaining with her feet firmly planted in the days past, she can't even begin to live in the present.
             The grandmother is caught up in the past in another way. She was wearing her "navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print" (O"Connor 406). Her proper ways in attire and.
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             presentation of herself are a representation of the ways in which she had lived. In those days, women were expected to dress as ladies would.