A good man is hard to find is a difficult story to read and understand just by looking at it once, I had to look over it several times before I could interpret it myself. From what I gather it’s about a grandmother who is always making things up in order to make her own life more lively.
In the beginning we have her, with her family, getting ready to go on vacation, and she’s trying to talk them out of going to Florida to visit her “connections” in Tennessee instead. She’s using the news of a murderer, The Misfit, to try to scare her only son, Bailey, into doing what she wants to do, showing us how arrogant she is from the start.
When her son doesn’t respond to her, showing he doesn’t respect her at all, she turns to his wife, who’s described,
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As the grandmother signals for help, the Misfit and his companions, sit in the car studying the scene before them. The Misfit has no shirt on because he had to bury his as we later find out. The grandmother, recognizing the men after a moment calls them out, this seemingly being the reason he kills them.
From here we learn he is of southern blood, meaning nothing to him of course, but never the less the grandmother tries to use it against his conscience. We also find out that his father saw him as different from his siblings, “a different breed of dog” that has to ask why. Being unusually embarrassed to be in front the ladies with no shirt on, the grandmother points him towards Bailey’s suitcase for one.
As The Misfit talks to the grandmother about how he got sent to the penitentiary, he tells her a shrink said he’s trying to “kill his father” by murdering all those other people, an outlet for the abuse he’s suffered no doubt. The grandmother trying to use religion to save her own life, tells him to pray and that Jesus will help him if he wanted it. The Misfit rejecting Jesus is an important play in the story, he seems to be an independent “god”, and doesn’t want or need any help achieving what he wants, he’s easily comparable to God and