Finding Flannery O'connor's "Good Man" in Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Home ('a Good Man is Hard to Find') (Critical Essay‪)‬

Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead is a rich study of the need for forgiveness and the power of grace. It can also be called, in Rebecca M. Painter's words, a "novelized treatise on the difficulty of lived virtue" (95). (1) "ibis novel--in itself but especially as seen in the light of Home--gradually reveals how the elderly John Ames, who appears at first to be simply a devout and kindly Congregationalist minister, has sinned against his namesake, John Ames Boughton, known as Jack. (2) In the course of the novel Ames confronts his decades-long rejection of Jack and finally forgives, accepts, and even comes to love him. One way to understand Ames' spiritual journey and Jack's existential questioning is through the lens of Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" It seems natural to associate these two writers whose work reflects their Christian faiths. Robinson is a permanent faculty member of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, of which O'Connor is probably the most famous alumna, and Farrar, Straus and Giroux publishes both authors. Yet the serious but sympathetic approach of Robinson, a northerner and a Congregationalist, to her subject is very different from O'Connor's, which relies on caricature and satire. Robinson even claims that "the influence of Flannery O'Connor has been particularly destructive" by leading readers not to expect "serious fiction to treat religious thought respectfully" ("A World of Beautiful Souls"). O'Connor communicated her Catholic vision by using "the grotesque as a primary way to reach the unbelieving reader" (Hawkins 28); in contrast, in these two novels Robinson shows thoughtful people in ordinary situations working their way to greater receptivity to grace through following both Calvin's teachings and their own charitable inclinations. As Robinson says, Ames' faith is "not dogmatic but a process" (Interview Part II with Silverblatt). (3)