What are the main structural elements in "A Good man is Hard to Find"?

Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is fiction, a
short story.  As such, it can be analyzed, or dissected, into structural elements according to
mainly plot, character, and figurative language.

What you must know,
though, is that O'Connor is a comic writer and a religious writer.  Many readers are confused by
her structure: she seems to be making fun of religion.  Rest assured, she is not.  In fact,
O'Connor is a very serious religious writer who uses caricatures (exaggerated characters) like
The Misfit and the grandmother to expose the relationships between good and evil, nihilism and
revelation, and hypocrisy and salvation.  In the end, all of her characters look flat, grotesque,
and evil, but--as readers--we have to imply that O'Connor means just the opposite of
them.

So, structural
elements:

Flat, static characters: the
Misfit, the grandmother.  They are both religiously confused: the Misfit is a nihilist, and the
Grandmother is a self-righteous Christian.  They change at the very end by touching each other
and realizing their lack of spirituality but not enough to be categorized as dynamic or
round.

Exposition: family readies for
the trip

Foreshadowing: the news about
the Misfit

Rising Action: grandmother
realizes the home she's looking for is in Tennessee and not
Florida

Turning Point: the accident
involving the cat; grandmother recognizes the
Misfit

Falling Action: the family is
escorted to the woods

Resolution /
Climax: the family is shot, one by one.  The grandmother pleads with the Misfit,
but to no avail.  Each character exposes the others'
hypocrisy

Symbolism: the Misfit
(archetype of evil); the gun; the inability to find one's home (spiritual home); the car; Jesus;
the woods

Situational Irony: the
grandmother is looking for the wrong house in the wrong state; the family wrecks and is rescued
by the Misfit; the grandmother thinks the Misfit is "saved," and the Misfit thinks that the
grandmother is "not saved"

Verbal
Irony: just about everything the Misfit and the grandmother
says:

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Misfit: "Jesus was the only One that
ever raised the dead and He shouldn't have done it.  He shown everything off
balance."

Grandmother: "Why you're one of my
babies. You're one of my own children!"