A good man is hard to find

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Flannery O'Connor, portrait photo 1947

A Good Man is Hard to Find (German title A good man is hard to find ) is a short story of the American writer Flannery O'Connor , which was created shortly after the outbreak of the insidious immunodeficiency disease of the author. After the first publication in 1953 in the literary magazine Avon Book of Modern Writing , the story was included in the same year as the cover story in the first volume of short stories Flannery O'Connors, which was reissued in 1955. The story has since been republished several times in various anthologies and collections. The German version first appeared in 1958 as a translation by Elisabeth Schnack in the anthology Ein Kreis im Feuer - Erzählungen .

In this narrative, one of the most unique American short stories of the post-war era , with its crude combination of realistic milieu sketch, grotesque character drawings, satirical criticism of time, tragicomic plot and existential themes, the vacation trip of a family that ended as a fatal odyssey, originally from Atlanta to the south Florida should lead. In particular, the final scene of this short story has been received and interpreted very differently in literary studies and criticism .

content

The story begins rather banally with the Bailey family leaving for a vacation trip to Florida. Grandmother Bailey cannot persuade her son to go to East Tennessee instead of Florida , where she experienced the glory of aristocratic life on a plantation in her youth . As her stubborn and eccentric behavior shows, she is still connected to the past, which for her still embodied human values, whereas her son and the other family members only represent the triviality of everyday life.

During a stopover for a snack at a gas station, the owner complains that a good person is difficult to find (p. 122).

The further course of the journey is increasingly determined by the grandmother's imaginary past. She arouses the children's interest in an old plantation house, which is said to be not far from the main road and which she remembers from her youth. With the help of the children, she persuades her son to take a little detour. However, when it occurs to her that this plantation is not in Georgia , but in Tennessee, an accident occurs on the unpaved remote road. Shortly afterwards, a vehicle stops at the scene of the accident and the family is hoping for help from its occupants. From the big, battered black car that resembles a hearse (“big black battered hearse-like automobile”, p. 126), however, the armed good-for-nothing (“the Misfit”, p. 127) and two of his cronies get out.

The Misfit is a violent criminal who recently escaped from prison and is said to be on his way to Florida according to newspaper reports (pp. 117 and 122). For this reason, the grandmother, who knew about it, tried to get her son to go to Tennessee instead of Florida at the beginning of the vacation trip (p. 118). She also immediately recognizes the violent criminal (p. 127). His cronies drag their son and grandson in the forest and shoot them (p. 128 f.). Then they take the daughter-in-law, the granddaughter and the baby into the forest and kill them too (p. 131).

Meanwhile, the grandmother keeps talking to the Misfit and wants to convince him that he can be a good person if he can only bring himself to pray and accept Jesus' help (p. 128 ff.). The Misfit , however, is not prepared to do so and only measures his actions by the punishment he receives for it: “ You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you ' re going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it. [...] I call myself the Misfit [...] because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I have gone through in punishment ”( p. 130 f. , German:“ One can do this or you can do that, kill a man or steal a tire from his car, it doesn't matter, because sooner or later you forget what you've done and get punished for it. [...] I sign up for the good-for-nothing because what I do I have done wrong, that is by no means good for all the punishments that I have had to endure. ")

Shortly before the last family members are murdered, the grandmother begs the Misfit again not to shoot them because he is of good origin and comes from a nice family. She offers him all the money she has with her and asks him to pray again (p. 131 f.). The Misfit replied that no one had ever tipped the undertaker and went on to say that Jesus should not have brought the dead back to life. This messed everything up. When Jesus has done what He taught, there is no choice but to throw it all away and follow Him. If He hasn't done what He taught, then there is nothing left but to enjoy the few minutes you have as you can: by killing someone, burning down their house, or doing something mean to them ; there are no pleasures other than committing meanness (in the original: “ [...] there never was a body that gave the undertaker a tip. [...] Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead. [ ...] He shouldn't have done that. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left, the best way you can - by killing somebody, or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness. ”( p. 132 ).

The Misfit then excitedly claims that he would have become a different person if he had been present at Christ's raising of the dead; however, he never met Christ (p. 132). The grandmother feels the inner need of Misfits to understand, and described him as one of their babies, and then the Misfit jumps back as if a snake bit him, and the grandmother of three shots to the chest hunts (p 132).

When his two cronies return from the forest, the Misfit notes that the grandmother would have been a good woman if someone had been around to shoot her every minute of her life (in the original: “ She would of been a good woman [. ..] if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life ”( p. 133 )). The short story ends with the Misfit's final remark that there is no real pleasure in life (“ It's no real pleasure in life ” ( p. 133 )).

Interpretative approach

The plot of this highly melodramatic short story O'Connor is - like a road movie - formed by the sudden and catastrophic vacation trip of an average white American family, as it is known, for example, from the television series of the early 1950s. Most of the action is depicted from the perspective of the grandmother, who is also the focus of the action.

The opening scene shows the banality of the everyday world of the young Baileys, whose six members are largely drawn as typical caricatures . Bailey reads the newspaper and doesn't let the nagging kids and grandmother's talk bother him. The mother remains nameless and without contours, sits on the sofa and feeds the baby. Bailey's son John Wesley gives cheeky answers and otherwise behaves rather boldly; Ironically , however, his name awakens memories of the English Methodist preacher of the same name , who tried in vain to initiate a revival movement in Georgia in 1735 . The family is characterized as Protestant without many words; at the same time, however, John Wesley's name suggests the existential-religious theme of the final part of the story. His sister June Star, as her name suggests, turns out to be complacent; the father himself has no stature as the head of the family and is crushed between the whining children and his own mother, who in the beginning part of the story is more or less caricatured as the sentimental, bigoted, conceited and domineering figure of a quirky Southern lady . The other family members try to shield themselves from the often strange acting peculiarities of the grandmother. In this initial situation, the newspaper news about the escaped Misfit is no longer taken seriously and cannot break the trivial and boring routines or habits of everyday family life : crimes like that of the Misfit simply have no place in such a regulated world. Regardless of this, the fatal end of the planned vacation trip is indicated immediately at the beginning of the short story.

The grandmother, who, despite her rather matriarchal demeanor, can only seldom or only get through her will with tricks, tries in vain to persuade the family to reverse the route after the news of the outbreak of the misfit ; Grotesquely enough , the old lady had already dressed up when she left the next morning in case of an accident; She also keeps her cat hidden in her suitcase, which later triggers the accident.

First of all, in the first half of the story, numerous hilarious dialogue fragments, especially in the chatter of the two children and their grandmother, reveal the selfish, unloving and vulgar banality of this average family with a satirical sideways glance at the old and new south. Despite all the realistic place names, the family's journey shows the characteristics of a symbolic odyssey from the start; so it does not go south as planned, but eastwards first. The grandmother's remarks when she saw a black street child (“ cute little pickaninny ” ( p. 119 , German: “niedliches Kleines Niggerchen”)) and remembers an episode from her virtuous youth, are of a “traditional, mindless patronizing racism ”; Finally, you drive past an old family cemetery - a first omen of the coming disaster.

While resting at the stucco gas station with a dining area, grandmother exchanges platitudes with the stout, sweaty gas station attendant and innkeeper Red Sammy, a redneck who treats his wife with unconscious contempt (p. 121). In nostalgia for the good old days , the old lady patronizes Red Sam as a “good man” (“you're a good man”, p. 122), to which he replies that a good person is hard to find and that it is getting worse and worse in the world. The grandmother comments on vague complaints about the moral depravity of the present day by referring to Europe's greed - an allusion to US support under the Marshall Plan . This episode, which seems inconsequential at first, only gains its real meaning in retrospect: The remark by Red Sam, referring to the title of the short story, is not taken seriously by anyone at this point as a mere expression; Only with the accident does the apparently trivial statement acquire its specific validity.

After the stopover, the grandmother continues to mourn her nostalgic memories of the pseudo-aristocratic life on the plantation in a past ideal world, as illustrated, for example, by Margaret Mitchell or Robert Penn Warren and other storytellers from the southern states . The illusionary nature of these notions becomes clear when the grandmother imagines that she moves the plantation she experienced as a child from Tennessee to Georgia . After you have passed Toombsboro (p. 123) (the additional b in the spelling in contrast to the real place name Toomsboro contains an additional prefix in the original with an allusion to the English word “tomb” = German “grave”), the beats Grandmother fatally suggests visiting a nearby property from the good old days, which can be reached by a small detour via an untravelled road. Horrified, however, she then realizes that she has made a mistake for a federal state, and thus involuntarily triggers an absurd chain reaction, reproduced by the narrator with laconic irony , which leads to the accident and the fatal encounter with Misfit and his cronies (p 124 f.).

The accident, initially cheered by the children, is interpreted by various interpreters of the story as the “climax of a parody of the causality principle typical of a realistic plot ”, with which Flannery O'Connor in a “primal scene of absurd thrownness” the existential randomness and unpredictability of the self the universe beyond human control. The family is "thrown out of the protective sheet metal housing of their car into an unknown wilderness", in which they meet the "three silent, armed and grotesquely dressed strangers" with their ominous "dented big black hearse" ("hearse-like automobile", p. 126) encountered.

The children get increasingly nervous; the tension rises and the surroundings seem more and more threatening. Half triumphantly, the grandmother makes another mistake in which she explicitly tells the Misfit that she recognized him immediately. The curse of her son hinted at by the reflector figure also emphasizes the eerie sensitivity of the Misfit, who tries to achieve perfect manners in spite of his backwoodsque manner of speaking .

In the following, the grandmother tries to save the situation with selfish appeasements (“ You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you? ” ( P. 127 , German: “ You wouldn't shoot a lady, would n't you?”)) And silly incantations by repeatedly referring to the Misfit as “good people from a good house” (“you must come from nice people”, p. 127); Nevertheless, her son Bailey, who reacts panicked and indecisive, is unceremoniously taken to the forest for execution together with the grandson John Wesley. In a first and last loving gesture, which seems grotesque in view of the situation, Bailey turns to the grandmother and assures her with a mixture of protective instinct and creatural fear that he will be back in a minute (“I'll be back in a minute, Mamma, wait on me ”, p. 128). The shots in the forest, to which the whole Bailey family ultimately fell victim, went uncommented; Through the seemingly strange attempt of the grandmother to persuade the murderer to improve, the gruesome murder moves eerily into the background, like in a Gothic horror story .

Without paying attention to the mother's hysterical questions, the Misfit , who has now taken a crouching position in front of his grandmother like Bailey before , begins , as it were, to a life confession in which, with melancholy seriousness, he rejects the honorable designation as a good person and the repeated request refuses to pray by grandmother. Frankly with an almost dreamy voice ("in an almost dreamy voice", p. 130) he reveals his emotional conflicts to the old woman: He has always felt vaguely persecuted, guilty and rightly condemned, but at the same time with a perverted understanding Fatefully entangled by original sin without a possibility of escape and "buried alive" ("buried alive", p. 130). He also desperately laments his absurd existence, in which there is basically no meaningful relationship between crime and punishment for him, and defines himself as someone with his “almost touching misinterpretation of the word misfit (which in the original sense of the word denotes the non-sociable outsider) for whom 'the world is out of joint' ”.

The misfit assigns the blame for this condition in a reversal of the Christian understanding of faith to Jesus Christ of all people; while the mother, the baby and June Star are murdered by his cronies and the grandmother, startled, grotesquely cranks her head "like a shriveled old turkey" ("Grandmother raised her head like a parched old turkey hen", p. 132) Misfit unmoved his paradoxical idea of ​​the calamitous saving acts of Jesus. In his spiritual confusion as a violent criminal, in contrast to the other characters in the story, all of whom are residents of the American " Bible Belt ", he nevertheless takes the New Testament doctrine of salvation seriously. According to his logic, if Jesus really was God's Son, there would only be “the path of selfless discipleship”. If, however, the world is godless and meaningless, then from his point of view only “a sadistic lust for evil” remains. At this point the otherwise thoughtless and talkative grandmother takes her faith so seriously that she begins to doubt it (" 'Maybe. He didn't raise the dead', the old lady mumbled " ( p. 132 , German: " 'Maybe He didn't wake the dead at all', the old lady mumbled, “)). When the Misfit's voice breaks and the grandmother feels his abysmal despair, she realizes her kinship with him. However, it is precisely her involuntary and this time obviously selfless gesture of maternal charity that provokes the explosion of the Misfit and leads the short story to its laconically told conclusion.

After her shooting, the grandmother gazes in her pool of blood - half sitting, half lying - smiling like a child at the cloudless sky. While the cronies of the Misfit are joking, the latter seems to suspect that the old woman has actually become a "good person" at the moment of her death through her loving gesture. So this murderer muses in his macabre concluding remark that the grandmother would have been “a good woman” if there had been someone “who would have shot her to death every minute of her life” (p. 133).

History of impact and intention

The mysterious figure of the desperately unscrupulous murderer and violent criminal The Misfit has been interpreted in completely different ways in the literary critical reception of the story. Some of the critics and interpreters see the Misfit as a “ psychopath ” and “victim of a violent environment” who “ exchanges his role as a rebel against the divine order for that of a disciple of Jesus”. In other interpretations of the story, the mysterious murderer is understood as the "embodiment of Miltonian Satan ", as a modern version of the " Antichrist " or as a Kierkegaardian figure of the "demonic man" or as a "representative of unbelieving and latently murderous humanity". Furthermore, the figure of Misfit is also interpreted as an “existential everyman”, who “connects the fatalistic submissiveness of the condemned Kafka with Dostojevski's sadomasochistic inability to guilt and atonement”.

The validity of these different attempts at interpretation, all of which can be taken as food for thought for dealing with the text, cannot be easily decided; However, what is decisive and must be clearly clarified is the dramaturgical function of the enigmatic Misfit : It ensures that the grandmother gains an "epiphanic (self) knowledge" at the moment of her death.

The frequent anthologization and different interpretations or commentaries on the short story in literary criticism prompted Flannery O'Connor to explain her "sensible use of the unreasonable" herself:

“The assumptions underlying my use of the irrational are those of the central Christian mysteries . A large part of the audience will not share these assumptions. All I can say is that there may be other ways than mine to read the story, but no other way in which it could have been written. Belief is, at least in my case, the engine that keeps perception going. [...] The grandmother is in the most important situation that life offers a Christian. She faces death. It seems that, like all of us, she is not too well prepared for it. "

In a letter to John Hawkes , Flannery O'Connor explains that for her the Misfit is "as the devil a messenger of good malgré lui , opening up the possibility of grace to the grandmother ". In O'Connor's sense, A Good Man is Hard to Find fits into the “concept of unity in the mystical body of Christ ”. According to Link, O'Connor's art consists in the fact that it “does not fix the reader to a dogmatic interpretation in the sense of their faith”, but rather allows “being touched in a human encounter”, which also touches the reader, to take shape.

As Flannery O'Connor's remarks show, in A Good Man is Hard to Find her aesthetic concept is inextricably linked with her Christian beliefs; According to her commentary, every good story is based on “a perfectly correct and completely unexpected gesture” that must transcend any simple “ moral ” or “ allegorical level” and refer to a level that has to do “with the divine and our participation in it” . According to her view, the grandmother's “triumph” lies in “that gesture of love” that results from “the gracious moment of her knowledge”. Flannery O'Connor describes it in her own words as follows: “Without this gesture and its accompanying words, I would have no story. [...] Not only does our age not have a keen eye for the barely perceptible intrusion of grace, it also has little sense of the nature of the violence that precedes and follows it. "The violence is" suitable in a very strange way ", to bring their characters back to reality and prepare them for the moment of grace.

However grotesque, improbable or bizarre the events in O'Connor's tale may seem, the short story, according to Link, remains true to the local color and combines typical elements of southern literature such as the brutal crime or the idealization of the past in a specific way, that of history "Gives a unique expressiveness."

Book editions (selection)

English editions

  • Flannery O'Connor: A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories . Harcourt and Brace Publishing, New York 1955.
  • A good man is hard to find . In: Flannery O'Connor: Complete Stories . Faber and Faber , London 1990, ISBN 978-0-571-24578-9 , pp. 117-133.

German editions

  • Flannery O'Connor: A good person is hard to find . In: Flannery O'Connor: A Circle in Fire - Stories . Translated by Elisabeth Schnack. Claasen Verlag, Hamburg 1958.
  • Flannery O'Connor: A good person is hard to find . In: Flannery O'Connor: A Circle in Fire - Stories . Translated by Elisabeth Schnack. rororo paperback edition, Rowohlt Verlag , Reinbek near Hamburg, 1967.
  • Flannery O'Connor: Hard to find a good person and other narratives . Translated by Elisabeth Schnack and Cornelia Walter. Diogenes Verlag , Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-257-21332-8 .
  • Flannery O'Connor: A good person is hard to find . In: Flannery O'Connor: Nobody can be trusted anymore. Stories. Translated from American English by Anna Leube and Dietrich Leube. Arche Literatur Verlag, Zurich-Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-7160-2769-1 .

Adaptations

Flannery O'Connor's short story provided the template for a 16-minute short film entitled Black Hearts Bleed Red in 1992, directed by Jeri Cain Rossi, who also wrote the script based on the storyline of A Good Man is Hard to Find . The role of Misfits was played in this film adaptation by the American painter and actor Joe Coleman .

The 2004 album Seven Swans by the American songwriter and folk musician Sufjan Stevens contains a version of A Good Man is Hard to Find as a song . In the lyrics, the story is based on the literary model O'Connor and presented from the perspective of the Misfit in the first person.

Secondary literature

  • Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , pp. 189-198.
  • Franz Link: "A Good Man is Hard to Find, 1953" . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , pp. 24-27.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See the information from Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , pp. 189 and 198. The German translation in the anthology Ein Kreis im Feuer was published after the first edition in 1958 by Claasen Verlag, Hamburg, in 1967 also as a paperback edition by Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg.
  2. ↑ See Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 189 f. and p. 196 ff. See also Franz Link: "A Good Man is Hard to Find, 1953" . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , pp. 24 and 26 f.
  3. ↑ Text citations and evidence refer to the edition of A Good Man is Hard to Find in Flannery O'Connor: Complete Stories . Faber and Faber, London 1990, ISBN 978-0-571-24578-9 , pp. 117-133. The corresponding German translations follow the translation by Elizabeth Schnack.
  4. ↑ See Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 191 and Franz Link: "A Good Man is Hard to Find, 1953" . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 25.
  5. ↑ See Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 191 f. and Franz Link: "A Good Man is Hard to Find, 1953" . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 25.
  6. ↑ See pp. 118 and 124. See also Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 191 f.
  7. ↑ See Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 192.
  8. ↑ See Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 192 f. See also Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 25.
  9. ↑ See Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 193.
  10. ↑ See the information and evidence in Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 192. The quotation is taken from this source.
  11. ↑ See Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 194.
  12. ↑ Cf. Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 25 f. and Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 195.
  13. ↑ See Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 194 f.
  14. ^ Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 196. See also Franz Link: “A Good Man is Hard to Find, 1953” . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 26.
  15. ^ A b Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 196.
  16. ^ Günter Ahrends: The American short story. Theory and development. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-17-005401-5 , p. 178.
  17. ^ A b Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 197.
  18. ^ Franz Link: "A Good Man is Hard to Find, 1953" . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 26 f.
  19. ↑ Quoted from: Daniel Göske: Flannery O'Connor - A Good Man is Hard to Find . In: Michael Hanke (Ed.): Interpretations · American Short Stories of the 20th Century . Reclam jun. Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-15-017506-2 , p. 198.
  20. ^ Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , p. 27.
  21. ↑ Manuela Reichart : Flannery O'Connor: "No human soul can still be trusted" - Dark stories from narrow-minded America , deutschlandfunkkultur.de, February 20, 2018, accessed on July 2, 2018
  22. ↑ Black Hearts Bleed Red (1992) . On: Internet Movie Database . See also Coleman in film and TV . On: Joe Coleman's website . Retrieved August 19, 2014.