M.+Morris

Flannery O’Connor Comforts of Home When a young, misfit, felonious, mentally unstable girl is brought into Thomas’s home by his mother, Thomas felt as if his comfortable home was being torn apart. Every time Thomas tried to rid himself of the girl, his mother kept bringing her back to the house. On many occasions, Thomas saw what the girl was truly there for, yet his mother was too naïve to notice. Despite the mother’s intentions of trying to help the girl, Thomas seeks help with the local authorities to get her out of his house which ultimately leads to the death of his mother. Because of the unawareness of the mother and her actions, Thomas finds himself in a worse situation than he had previously been in due to the sheriff’s **ironic** misinterpretation at the end of the story.

Each story dealt with a mother and her son and a misfit that was **ironically** placed in the story. Both pieces revolved around a house. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the family is traveling to a house, suggested by the mother, when they encounter a misfit. Similarly, the mother in “The Comforts of Home” welcomed a misfit into their home. In each story the son was skeptical of his mother’s suggested plan. For example, in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the son, Bailey, is very straight forward in is answer. When the mother suggested they go see the house, he simply answered “no” with a rigid jaw (417). In “The Comforts of Home” Thomas constantly told his mother “I will not put up with this another day” (215). In both stories the mother basically got what she wanted, which ultimately led to her death. Flannery O’Connor portrays the mother as someone who is just trying to help in each of her pieces. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the mother told the Misfit that he must pray (424). In comparison, the mother in “The Comforts of Home” defended her position by asking her son “Suppose it were you?” (216) The **theme** in both works is that small decisions lead to large consequences. The mother’s decision to try and help the Misfit in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by telling him to pray, just infuriates him more as evidenced by his reply, “Jesus thrown everything off balance” (424). This is one of the reasons that he killed her. Comparatively, in “The Comforts of Home”, the mother’s decision to help a girl who is unfortunate (215) leads to her demise. Each story portrayed the son as being the wise decision-maker, yet still submitting to his mother and her wishes. Also, each work is written in such a way where the readers feel almost sympathetic because of the details that O’Connor chooses to include. For example, in “A Good Man in Hard to Find”, the Misfit says “God never made a finer woman than my mother and my daddy’s heart was pure gold” (420). This shows that the Misfit had a very loving side. In “The Comforts of Home”, O’Connor includes details like, “she appeared to look on him with compassion” (217) to make her seem as if she was a truly genuine person.

The **theme** in each story is small decisions lead to big consequences. In each story, the consequence was death. A gun **symbolizes** death, because in both stories, the characters were killed with a gun.

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