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A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

1147 Words5 Pages

Character Analysis of the Misfit from “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is the story of a family who takes a trip to Florida, but while traveling there, they are in a car accident in the country. Here is where the family meets The Misfit. The Misfit and his men come upon the wreck and seem helpful. At first, the family did not realize who the men were. Finally, the grandma recognizes him as “The Misfit” she had read about in newspapers. She had been highly concerned about running into him the entire trip. Throughout the story, there is a foreshadowing of their inevitable run-in with the man. He talks with the grandma. The grandma’s and the misfit’s moral compasses are revealed during their conversation. This conversation …show more content…

The Misfit states, “I never was a bad boy I remember of” and “but somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary. I was buried alive” (O’Connor 407). These statements point to the fact that he believes he has done nothing wrong and is innocent. He also states that he did not commit the crime he went to prison for. He believes his actions are justified, maybe because of something that happened in his past or as revenge. These quotes also tell us that he believes he is the victim. He feels that he has been treated unjustly or failed by the justice system, and this is his way of revenge. He possibly feels no remorse, which is why he believes his actions are justified. Either way, he acts as if he is the victim of the situation he created for himself. The statement, “ I call myself The Misfit because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I got in punishment” (O’Connor 408), further supports the idea that he believes he is a victim of the circumstances he created for himself. The Misfit has a victim mentality that justifies the actions he …show more content…

Also, he was determined and unwavering, no matter what was said to him or what happened. For a person to live this way, it does take characteristics like these not to fall apart. The point is, with such determination and moral groundedness, The Misfit could have done so much more in his life. He could have used his determination to help people and the world. The Misfit must have had a troubled past. For a person to act this way, they must have been through something traumatic. Part of The Misfit’s reason for this behavior is that he believed he was a victim and that none of his actions were his fault. He felt that the way he acted and his actions resulted from his past and not his bad choices. The Misfit’s problem was his self, not his past, and not what he had experienced. If he had made better choices or chosen to change his ways and not play the victim of his actions, he could have been an upstanding individual. Everyone has potential; whether they choose to put their good characteristics to use or not determines the person they become. The Misfit is a prime example of

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Was the Misfit really such a bad guy? In the short story a Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor he is given a bad reputation. He is a felon convicted of murder and escaping prison. However, as he is introduced towards the end of the story he is not portrayed as a macho mean killing machine. He is described as some old looking guy with spectacles, no shirt and tight pants.

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The Misfit knows who he is and does not pretend to be otherwise, unlike the old lady. With a show of unpretentiousness, he clearly states, “Nome, I ain’t a good man” (O’Connor 427). In the end, the antagonist enlightens the Grandmother with his brutal honesty, and her “head cleared for an instance” (O’Connor 430). In the final moments of her life, she is able to drop all pretenses and view evil in the form of the Misfit as something she can accept within herself by exclaiming, “Why you’re one of my babies” (O’Connor 430). Ironically, at the moment she reaches out to him, he kills her.

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With this mentality, the grandmother literally reaches out to the Misfit as if “[he was] one of [her] own children” (136). The Misfit looks so much like the grandmother’s own son that she is finally able to find it in her heart to love the man who just killed her whole family, just like Jesus would have done. The Misfit picks up on her compassion and right as she

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It is by chance that the family encounters the Misfit and his group on the road. In the text it states, “‘I never was a bad boy that I remember of,’ The Misfit said in an almost dreamy voice, ‘but somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary’” (O’Connor 11). One can see that the Misfit believed that he was once a good person, but he succumbed to his inner darkness. In addition, a conversation in the text declares, “‘If you would pray,’ the old lady said, ‘Jesus would help you.’.....

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In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor explores the perception of what makes a person good, diving into the realms of religion, fear, and selfishness. The reader is submerged deeper into what the word ‘good’ truly means, while O’Connor reveals the grandmother’s corrupt version of this process through character development, symbols, and the theme of selfishness, proving The Misfit to be more ‘good’ than the grandmother and her family. One of O'Connor's best, yet considerably violent, stories depicts the brutal killing of a family on vacation by a notorious murderer dubbed The Misfit. O’Connor’s character development throughout the story helps reveal The Misfit’s twisted - yet in his view, acceptable - moral

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The grandmother is the cause of the death of her entire family when she blurts out that she recognizes and knows who the Misfit is. The grandmother and the Misfit differ their reactions to the punishments that have been dealt in their lives. The Misfit believes that he is unforgivable and that there is nothing that he can do to change who he is. The grandmother on the other hand has a moment of grace and forgives the Misfit for the killing of her family.

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Viewing The Misfit as a tragic figure, we sympathize with his actions and feel remorse for who he has become. The readers see him as a victim and sympathize for his actions, including killing the elderly Grandmother. Although he is an awful person, because he is a male character, it is acceptable for him to have issues, but it is not acceptable for a woman to have any sort of issue. As the Misfits says, “She would have been a good woman...if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (O’Connor), this suggests that the Grandmother was an awfully annoying woman, but if she had a man there to keep her in line, she would have been a decent

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The Misfit 's mind is one of the most complicated of any villain in O 'Connor’s stories and in all literature. His mental state is most evident in "the scene between the Grandmother and the Misfit at the climax of the story" (Walls 3) This recent escapee 's psyche can be described as "tails short of the athlete’s morality, for he plays by no one 's rules except his own" (Fike). This mental state is typical of most criminals but the Misfit’s perception on religion is not so conventional. Usually, when a person commits a heinous act and if the person is spiritual they will say God told them to do it.

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The violence that we do not get to see for ourselves are the crimes the Misfit committed before the story began. The story begins with the grandmother telling Bailey to “read here what it says he did to these people’” (O’Connor 575). These crimes are violent murders that the Misfit committed beforehand. This displays the criminal world that we live in.

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The grandmother uses Jesus as a scapegoat to show how she is a child of God while the Misfit tells of how he really perceives Jesus and that there is no justification of his actions. In the event of the car accident, the Grandmother was left with a physical crisis that quickly showed as her family was sent off into the woods to be killed one by one. This soon transitioned to a spiritual crisis both between the Grandmother and the Misfit as she uses Jesus's name to try and escape her fate. This spiritual crisis leads the characters to express their personal conception of reality and how they perceive the revelation of the situation that they are in. The Grandmother has a sense that reality should revolve around her and that she should manipulate tools such as religion to benefit her outcome.

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The misfit gains awareness of human morals when he kills the grandmother and he says, "She would have been a good woman...if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life" (O 'Connor 1020), he then realized that she wasn 't all that good. O 'Connor did a good job of interpreting the grandmother as a way to put away the values of the old Southern America; she also interprets the Misfit as a type of common man who is defiantly not perfect which can a realistic version of the new Southern America. In "A Good Man is Hard to Find", the irritating grandmother cares more about matters such as her appearance and manners, she dressed her best for the car ride and the reason for her doing this is so that "In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would at once know that she was a lady." (O 'Connor 1010). The grandmother is a very selfish woman, the first thing she said to the Misfit is "You wouldn 't shoot a lady, would you?"

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