(O'Connor 30) The Misfit reacts to the grandmother in this particular way because he is a sociopath. “I was never a bad boy that I remember of… but somewhere along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary.” (O'Connor 27) The Misfit says this after he sent his friends to kill the grandmother's son.
The grandmother can be characterized as a misfit in the story because she originally wants to go to Tennessee but the rest of the family wants to go to Florida. This shows you that she is the only one that doesn’t conform to everyone else’s opinion. She tries to convince everyone about the serial killer going around named “The Misfit” and how they might encounter it, but they choose to ignore her, this also foreshadows the events to come. Even though she didn’t want to go to Florida she doesn’t want to stay home, and also trying to convince her son’s kids but they just end up making fun of her.
In the story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” by Flanner O’ Conner the story deals with a character who appears to be a dark caged animal .The Misfit is actually a fallen angel whom has been sent to eliminate the bad people of this world. The Misfit, is the antagonist in the story who is a convicted murderer aloose from the state penitently of Florida. The story describes the Misfit as being a ‘bad guy’ he kills an entire family. From a reader’s perspective, the misfit feels as though he does not belong in the world and battles a severe mental disorder.
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.
He does things that are considered immoral and wicked, the two main principles of
The criminal doesn’t like this outcome, but comes to accept this. The story revolves around a man named the Misfit, Bobby Lee, a grandmother and her family. In the book, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’Connor,” the theme of the story is about how our past is always a part of us and accepting it. The
The grandmother wants to convince the killer he is an acceptable person: “You shouldn’t call yourself the Misfit because I know you're a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell” (O’Connor). The grandmother feels that she knows the Misfit is a righteous person by the way he looks, but he is a killer and not a good person. The grandmother's sins are her selfishness and pride. The Misfit has a lot of sins including killing numerous different people: “The Misfit is troubled by the evil in the world even though he is a contributor.
When she finds out that the Misfit is going to kill her, she says to him “ [Y]ou’re good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell,” just to save her life (O’Connor, par. 90). A criminal like the Misfit, who the grandmother doesn’t want any of her children to be around, suddenly becomes a good man in the eyes of the
The Misfit is certain that he does not follow Jesus Christ and his morals while the grandmother is uncertain of her morals. She transitions from believing in Jesus’s beliefs to denying them, finally concluding that he didn’t raise the dead. At the end of the story, The Misfit indirectly references her lack of morals. “‘She would have been a good woman’ The Misfit said, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life (O’Connor 245).”
The family stops for lunch at “The Tower and meets a character called Red Sammie Butts. This is where the grandmother strikes up a conversation with him. They talk about how it was back in the olden days when there were good people and Red Sammy states, “A good man is hard to find,” (Lawrence 410). The Misfit is the second major character in the story after the grandmother. The Misfit is an escaped criminal who comes in contact with the grandmother and her family when they get into an accident on the road.
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
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.
The Misfit proving the grandmother quite right, that he was not a good
As opposed to the Grandmothers constant change of morals to favor certain situations, the Misfit has morals that are set in stone and adhere to his past, present and future. As the two characters converse, religion sparks an interest in the Misfit because it is something he is interested in understanding but knowing it must not be true. He believes that he must see it with his own eyes to prove the existence. His concept of reality also relates himself to Jesus, so much so as to believe he is a realistic representation of Him. He goes on to tell that the only difference is between the crimes committed and the proof held against him.
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?"
