SOURCE: "Belief and the Tonal Dimension," in The Question of Flannery O'Connor, Louisiana State University, 1973, pp. 18-36.

Stephens is an American critic. In the following excerpt, she examines the abrupt shift from comedy to tragedy in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find. "

"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" divides, in terms of the time it encompasses, into two parts. The opening page of the story describes the grandmother's attempt to get the family to go to Tennessee instead of Florida on their vacation; this serves as a kind of brief prologue to the rest of the tale, all of which takes place the following day as the family begins its fatal trip to Florida. The trip itself then divides into two parts of its own. The first part—the morning ride through middle Georgia with the grandmother and children reacting to the sights along the roadside...