Flannery O'Connor sets her stories in the rural South, a place culturally dependent on the classic sentiments of the antebellum aristocracy. Annie Proulx relies on the cowboy cliché of rugged independence by setting her narratives in the rural western state of Wyoming. The cultural feelings in both regions, segregation and classism in O'Connor's case; and independence and solitude in Proulx's case, act as an impenitence to conflict in many of the author's respective tales. In O'Connor's “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” it is the imagined pre-war past that unleashes the tension in a landscape of cultural uncertainty that motivated the grandmother's actions, leading to conflict with the Misfit and the death of her family. In Proulx's “A Lonely Coast” the expanse of the West is compared to the unknown darkness of the ocean, paralleling Josanna's fall into an abusive relationship and her own death. O'Connor relies on opinions rooted in the past and Proulx exploits the difficulties of the present, but both landscapes cause conflict at the heart of their characters' downfalls. It is in a landscape of cultural uncertainty that Flannery O'Connor establishes her story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. It examines the natural tension between the old aristocracy and progress through the grandmother, who remained in antiquity and possesses a classist moral sense. In the uncertain Southern landscape, his aristocratic inclinations drive his family to death. His landscape is rooted in the ancient Southern aristocracy as the physical environment evokes memories of the past and a way of life older. “'Look at that cemetery!' said the grandmother, pointing it out. “That was the old family burial site. It belonged to the plantation” (O'Connor 120). Like… half of the paper… which started the story and triggers a series of events leading to the death of the family. Wyoming's landscape of independence and emptiness similarly affects Josanna in Annie Proulx's “A Lonely Coast.” to the West. This relationship then places her on the wrong side of the rifle, where Wyoming's susceptibility to violence causes its death present, Proulx's cultural environment derives entirely from present circumstances, hardships, and desire. Both landscapes, however, lead to conflict and the downfall of the central characters in their respective stories character actions and drives the story.