Anthony Altomare
Professor Scardelli
English 1202
18 September 2014
The Essence of Evil In 2005, 2008, and 2012 director Christopher Nolan introduced the Batman trilogy that shook the film industry. All three movies introduced new villains that Batman had to defeat. Nolan took each villain and turned them into what was almost an evil deity. A tactic like this was merely adopted by Nolan though. Forces of evil can be seen everywhere, however it appears in fiction the most. Evil will be found regardless of whether the story is written as a novel or short story. In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” the author, Flannery O’Connor, shows how there is no good in the world, but instead just different forms of evil. June Star and John Wesley, the children, represent one form of evil as chaos. Chaos is an extreme unorganized state in which nothing is normal. Children tend to be very honest people and do not regard other people’s feelings or opinions. Bailey’s children, June Star and John Wesley, take this to the extreme as they are wild and uncontrollable. Both of the children are very round characters because their actions are unpredictable. Unforeseeable actions are taken when John Wesley says “Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground, and Georgia is a lousy state too.” (O’Connor 424). Here John Wesley completely disrespects his home state and then talks bad about another state. Specifically, he uses “a hillbilly dumping ground” to describe Tennessee, strong words for a young child. John Wesley clearly does not care about what his parents and grandmother think about where their home is, and the grandmother even responds saying that children should be respectful of their native states. The children show a severe lack of respect and have little remorse for what they had just said. They have no filter which results in saying whatever they want no matter what the consequences. Chaos takes form through the children in many ways, but their verbal interactions represent how freely they speak. However, what their unrestricted speech is evil because no good ever comes out of it. Verbal interactions are not the only way John Wesley and June Star show their chaotic evil, but they also display it through their actions. After the accident the children get out of the car and run around screaming “We’ve had an ACCIDENT!” (O’Connor 428). O’Connor describes the children frantically running around with a strange sense of joy (O’Connor 428). This joy does not stem from making it out of the accident safely though. It comes from excitement of the accident and how everything was suddenly shaken up. The accident is where the chaos occurs and the children amplify it. After the accident the children bring a complete sense of havoc because of they ran around in hysteria. Pandemonium like the accident shows the evil that chaos can bring. In Eileen Pollack’s essay “Flannery O’Connor and the New Criticism”, the author discusses O’Connor’s style of writing. Pollack explains how O’Connor tried to make the “central mysteries of Christianity” apparent to an audience of sinners (Pollack 468). O’Connor executes this attempt through the children and their anarchic actions, displaying how wild and rash decisions can have a detrimental outcome.
On top of this, June Star expresses her disappointment that nobody was killed or injured (O’Connor 428). It is alarming when June Star expresses this because all of the people involved in the accident were her family members. One could even say that she would feel happy if someone was killed in the accident. Having a loved one killed in a car accident would be something out of the ordinary, which is another element of chaos. June Star enjoys the fact that the current situation is hectic and without order, but she loathes at how nobody is hurt. Her feelings after the accident show signs of evil because she wanted somebody to get hurt and she enjoyed the accident putting everyone’s lives in danger. At any point in time chaos