好人难寻 读后感 英文版

Violence and Redemption in A Good Man Is Hard to FindIn the novel A Good Man Is Hard to Find, the author does not use the anfractuous plots and bright hues,but just describes the characters who are abnormal,pathological,vulgar and despicable in the pure tone of black and white,and represents the violence and salvation of them.O'Connor chooses characters who are abnormal as protagonists with intent, be passionate for dealing with the characters’ ending in a way of violent death, is actually wants to wash away their sin through the road of religious salvation, in order to achieve the transcendence on spiritual level.Characters created by her are eager to be intimate and friendly, sincere and harmonious, but they are fettered by the sin of selfish, treacherous and cunning which makes them can only wander and struggling at the edge of the faith.The moment of death gives them the possibility of sudden enlightenment in their minds.Violence of the SouthIn O'Connor's novels, violence is given with more meaning, it is not just an external form,a kind of salvation or grace of the God,but also a complex inner conflict of southerners in the extreme background which is absurd and unreasonable during the transition of society, it is also the hope of O'Connor on the people in the real world to open the valve of grace in their hearts.Murder by The MisfitThe Misfit is a typical "abnormal man"created by O'Connor who is a freak of modern American.He is a nihilist,a psychopath, a man who has a crisis of faith,and a murderer. He is not a killer inborn, he just lost himself and carried to extremes during the path of pursuing the God in this community which is anomic and lack of faith.In his communication with the grandma, most words are seems to be his soliloquy. He says that he has forgot a lot of things,the police said he killed his father and took him into prison,but he seems to be sure that his father died of the flu, but not killed by him. The police claimed that they have an official document, but he had never seen it. The prison with fence compelling buried his life. He says his parents are the best persons in the world,his mother is the best woman created by God, and his father has a heart of gold. But his father said he was "different breed of dog" and said he was "going to be into everything". It seems that the father does not like him. He can not get love from his father.He was treated like a heterogeneous and was excluded from the normal life of family from his childhood.The evil of The Misfit now is related to his unfortunate experience and his family background,his parents abandoned him first. He does not believe in God. When he was eager to get love during his childhood, he must have been prayed piously.When he was wronged and got into prison, he must have been done this as well. But in the real world where the black and white can be reversed, no one can save him, his sensitive inner and remnant dignity are trampled ruthlessly, he was abandoned by God. His heart became sinking,indifferent,and despairing gradually. When he tells about his parents and previous experience,his voice is gentle and dreamlike. Perhaps it is due to age,he can not feel the pain of his wound in heart. It seems that those things he is telling are just a dream, and those previous,dreamlike memories are just a proof of him as a normal people.And when it comes to God, his hate begins to break out,he says：“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 othermeanness to him. No pleasure but meanness”.When The Misfit is angry, the old grandma wants to save him with great love. She murmurs: "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" ,then she reaches out her and touches his shoulders.Just this touch makes The Misfit feel so surprised,he rapids back, feeling like bitten by a snake bitten , and shoots on the old lady’s chest with three shots.The Misfit has no name, but he can be any one with any name.This kind of people witness and experience too much evil, but they can not find the way of salvation and the export of their inner hearts.They can bear the families’ indifference and the society with indifference and injustice, but when their faith ,which is the inner pillar of spirit in their hearts collapses, they can not bear any longer.Faith is the last straw to crush the camel. They feel desperate for society and human beings,They close the door of heart and refuse to contact with others.Physical contact,which symbolizes intimacy in the eyes of normal people,becoming a poison which is no difference between the snake's.Their hearts are full of resentment which is especially for God. Because God did not save them when they are suffer and let the bad guys at large. They can not vent their anger, only can get a kind of pleasure when they destroy the society and ruin others.No matter how guilty a person is,he will not be punished if there is no hell,and there will be no redemption for good guys no matter how kind he is if there is no heaven.What kind of blow is it for those who put all the hopes on God.The death of Spirit of is more terrible than the death of body.It is more unbearable.Social illsIn the southern society created by O'Connor,the way of people's life has changed a lot. On the one hand, people's religious customs and ideas are still deep-rooted, but on the other hand, because of the impact of money worship,people's faith has changed,the relationship between people becomes indifferent and utilitarian, and at the same time,the soul is also filled with the negative emotions like lonely, confusion, lost,dissatisfaction,a variety of social problems have emerged.In the novel A Good man is hard to find , the contemporary southern adults live like a walking dead with depression, indifference and vapidity,they live with a body shell without spirit,such as Mr&Mrs.Bailey.They are the ones who need salvation, but they don not get it and finally died.Their life is more like a sleepwalking for which it does not matter to live or die.Those children with purity and innocence are heir and disseminator of the civilization and all outstanding achievements of human beings. But birthing and growing up under this chaotic background,they are influenced by the alienated ideologies in this deformed world from their childhood, people's thoughts and actions are all dominated by the interests and money,the grandson and granddaughter of the old lady have no innocence at all,they talk with adults unscrupulous,without concerns.They have no upbringing,their speech can not without money and adventure.The old grandma claims that she is believe in Christ,it seems kind and full of love on the surface,but actually,she is selfish, hypocritical,cold, vulgar, empty, self-centered and indifferent with religious consciousness.She always wants to pretend herself as an elegant, educated civilized people while she is reveling in the superiority of class and race all the time, discriminating against blacks, using the words of racial discrimination like pickaninny and nigger. She does not really care about others, and she never really loves her families .so her families do not respect hereither.She ignores the life and death of her families, but only cares about her personal safety, and even the voice of shooting comes from the jungle can not make her fluctuated. She is the defender of the old system of the South, the embodiment of the egocentrism of the Western culture, the metaphor and symbol of order and reason in Western,and the typical representative of the middle class of white. And all that she represents will disappear with her death, it needs to accept the baptism and salvation of the soul.O'Connor believes that the "virtue" of “a good man”which contains pride, self-righteousness, hypocrisy, conceit in secular sense, is the greatest sin, and is a stumbling block to salvation.As soon as a man can realize the sins and want to make a confession,there can be an opportunity to get redemption. Therefore,the best way to make sinners awake is to break their inherent ideas and push them to the edge of helpless with violence,it can lead them to realize the human weakness can bring a great harm and thus to repent themselves,get the blessing of God,and their soul will be saved.Redemption of the grandmaIn A Good man is hard to find,the misfortune experienced by the old grandma when she travels outside with her families shows people a road of soul salvation.This trip is a family trip on surface,but in essence, is a trip of soul salvation.The old grandma’s persuasion to others is also a persuasion to herself, it makes her embark on the road of salvation, even if the ending is death.PersuasionThe old grandma’s persuasion is an important line which throughout the text.At the beginning of this story,she persuades her son not to take a holiday to Florida in South,but to Tennessee in North instead with the reason of the news reported on newspaper,“Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida...”This persuasion is is for the safety of her family on the surface,but in fact ,she just wants to visit her relatives in Tennessee.This persuasion vividly reflects her selfish side.And when they are in the car,in order to achieve her own purpose of visiting her hometown, she vividly depicts the house in her memory and the treasure which is not exist,and at the same time ,she instigates her two young ignorant grandchildren,that makes“The children began to yell and scream that they wanted to see the house with the secret panel.”and finally leads them to the death road.This persuasion fully reflects that she is a despotic and self-centered woman.The climax of this line is the dialogue between the old grandma and The Misfit after their encountering.When she faces the threat of fugitive, she blindly touts and flatters him,she says The Misfit is a “good man”again and again,and says to him，”You wouldn’t shoot a lady.”Her blandishment to The Misfit shows that she is a selfish and hypocrisy woman,but not a “good man”which is flaunted by herself.She watches her son and her grandchildren killed by The Misfit,she persuades him to pray to get the forgiveness from God.When she is the survival after her families are killed,she still has the fluke mind.She struggles,“Jesus!”cried her，“You’ve got good blood! I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I’ll give you all the money I’ve got!”O'Connor uses the persuasion of the old grandma to The Misfit to expose that the old grandma is just a reputed Catholic, in fact, she is a selfish, hypocritical and greedy people afraid of death.As the description of this novel,“...the grandma's head cleared for an instant...she murmured, 'Why you're one of my babies.You're one of my own children!”,the persuasion of the old grandma to The Misfit before her death is no longer for survival, but for salvation, the kindness of God is given to The Misfit equally. This marks the spirit of the old grandma has a qualitative change. That is the moment of getting the grace from God.DeathGrandma's death in A good man is hard to find is so cruel that people can not tolerate the fact at first. Although she's always superficial, selfish and hypocritical, she still is a pure grandma. Flannery O'Connor gives her fate of death with a simple and sheer reason–the death for grandma is her rebirth as well. It can be seen as to purchase of the resurrection, for the moment when grandma passes away, it means she ste foot on the reservation road where can show the value of her life; it means her worth representation as a real person, no matter how that moment short. Therefore, grandma can go away peacefully with that much though-provoking, because she is so afraid of death. With fairy tale, gentle and happy smile on her whole face, she just looks up at the vault of heaven. Grandma regards The Misfit as her own child, and it is the first time for her to do some good things out of love. The glorious moment in her life from the view of grandma herself as well as others is the moment of god's grace. For Catholicism, death means the end of mundane life from one aspect-the body of people is actually "dust", and it should be it finally. From the other aspect, death means the immortal soul can finally get the chance to enter the eternal kingdom of heaven,and the death is also a symbol of a sublime life.When the old grandma dies,“the grandma who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.”This image reveals the religious implication of the novel to the readers, the last death of the old grandma can be seen as she is not on a road of no return, but that she has accepted the grace of God,and indicates a kind of soul salvation,it is a way to regain the new life. But her families can not realize the guilty of their own until they are dying, so even though they also end with death, their death is meaningless and the soul was not redeemed. In this part, the anabiosis of human nature and religious beliefs are at the expense of violence and death. At the last moment of life, the old grandma experiences a real fission,that is ,she takes herself as a soul as others and gets rid of the ideology of material pursuit. In this way, she completely won the salvation of Jesus, and with the joy and happiness of the soul salvation. At this moment,it indicates that the old grandma’s human nature to be restored, and finally gets the relief from death,and gets the “new life “awarded by God.O'Connor once said “I was born to be a Catholic, and death has always been my imaginary brother. It does not make any sense to me if a story does not end in death or its omen.”Her viewpoint that death is inevitable in human existence has directly affected her novel creation, teeming her works with stressing atmosphere，which is shocking and appalling. From the perspective of artistic effects, the tragic effect displayed in her works does make a hit. O'Connor is therefore called “one of the greatest tragic writers who insist that death be the main feature of human experience.”Consequently, some say her view of life and death is closely related to religious belief. Death is the destination of everything. Death is eternity. Death is atonement. According to Bible, man is born to be guilty ever since Adam and Eva, our original ancestors, went down. We live in a world full of malice and we are unable to do good. Men will do good thingsonly after they do wrong. Men will be aware of their own sins once they break God’s disciplines and rules. That is why human beings are doomed to fall, and go to the physical and spiritual destruction.Doomsday trial shall one day come because human has to suffer before they can be salvaged. When we are tortured in the world, the only thing we can do is to pray for God’s mercy and pity to rescue us from hardships for the only thing that can complete the redemption is His love. We have no meaning of existence without His favor, and therefore all attempts to shake off His blessings are in vain.In O’connor’s composition,she dexterously chooses the most typical figures from American Southern life，and puts these images in the particular religious field to describe the souls of these alleged pious believers and present their abundant inner activity in deepest heart. As a calm and subjective passer-by，she desperately exaggerates their thoughts and behaviors and ultimately makes these so-called pious followers deformed and contorted in the reality surrounded by violence，death，threat and profit，so as to uncover the deeper evil and dark of dissemblers hidden under the surface of goodness and morality. But，in the moment that their lives end，they suddenly realize that the endless desire and greedy，the uncontrolled evil in their hearts. Hence，under the various，bold and bloody views of showing death and violence，they make a new and true understanding of themselves and faith. O’connor explains that “The only way for people want a relief is violence，for it is violence that drags people back to reality and makes provision for favor”，what's more，she thinks these people are too stubborn，nothing except violence can fresh them. In O’connor's novels，violence is the most common and typical method for her to describe the self-realization of the bad people. There is a deep connection between her persistent feeling towards death and her faith，“I am an inborn Catholic and death is my imaginative brother，I can not understand that a story does not end up in death or foreboding death”. Death is also equipped with special connotation，it never means the end of life but the sole inspiration on spirit. As far as O’connor concerned，violence and death can transform people from direct sense to divine transcendent，and understand the real inspiration of Catholic，that is called transcendent—under the violence to prospect the existence of god and everlasting value，which highlights that humanity overpasses common customs and elevates to divinity level so as to finish spiritual salvation under god' s enlightenment of faith.。