SOURCE: "Theme and Setting in 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find'," in Renascence, Vol. XXIV, No. 4, Summer, 1972, pp. 177-80, 206.

In the following essay, Kropf surveys the major themes of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find. "

The Criticism of Flannery O'Connor's work has failed to throw any considerable light on one of her most popular stories, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." To a large extent critics of Miss O'Connor have been preoccupied with the religious meaning of her symbols and the relation of her stories to Catholic doctrine. To a degree such a preoccupation is obviously valid; Miss O'Connor's own comments in "The Fiction Writer and His Country" to the effect that "I see from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy" have encouraged commentators on her works to bring to their task the assumption, rarely qualified or explained, that as Thomas A. Lorch has written "Flannery...