SOURCE: "O'Connor's Ancient Comedy: Form in 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find'," in Journal of the Short Story in English, No. 16, Spring, 1991, pp. 29-39.

In the following essay, Donahoo analyzes the influence of Dantean and Aristophanean comedy on "A Good Man Is Hard to Find. "

More than any other short story in the Flannery O'Connor canon, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" has attracted the attention of commentators, not the least of whom is the author herself. Both in letters and lectures, O'Connor found herself explaining the story, trying to recover it from the grasp of symbol hunters and allegory explicators, by ending a frustration perhaps summarized by her description of an exchange with an "earnest" young teacher seeking to know why the Misfit's hat was black. "Anyway," O'Connor wrote to Dr. Ted Spivey, "that's what's happening to the teaching of literature."

Perhaps this explains why...