Literary Devices in O'Connor's Works

One example of a literary device present in O'Connor's writing is the use of foreshadowing. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, O’Connor uses foreshadowing about the escaped criminal though the grandmother’s words in the beginning of the story to predict their interaction with The Misfit in the future. “ ‘Now look here Bailey,’ she said, ‘here read this’, and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. ‘Here this fellow that calls himself the misfit is aloose from the federal pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did’ ”(O’Connor 356). That quote foreshadows “The grandmother shrieked. She scramble to her feet and stood staring. ‘You're the misfit!’ she said. ‘I recognized you at once!’ ” (O’Connor 362). 

Rationale for selection: By talking about the Misfit from the very first few sentences of the story, it causes the audience to remember the name and take its significance into consideration before knowing the rest of the plot. It also foreshadows the grandmother recognizing the criminal after how she was the one who warned her son about the possible dangers associated with their traveling. 

Another example of a literary device is irony found in O'Connor's story "Good Country People".“But she was as sensitive about the artificial leg as a peacock about its tail. No one ever touched it but her. She took care of it as someone else would his soul, in private and almost with her own eyes turned away” (O’Connor 378). 

Rationale for selection: Hulga’s strong walls were brought down by the boy, and she began to trust him more than anyone else. She compared her soul to the leg, and so she felt as if she was sharing with him a piece of herself. By stealing her wooden leg, he had literally stolen a piece of her and the trust that she could never get back.