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Grandmother In Flannery O Connor's A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” tells of a family who takes a vacation down to Florida and encounters a wanted serial killer nicknamed The Misfit. While the story appears to revolve around The Misfit himself, it actually is about the true misfit of the story, the grandmother. The grandmother is the true misfit due to her inability to cooperate with her family, her inability to let go of racist tendencies, and her inability to live in the present.
Right from the get-go, the grandmother is straining the relationship she has with her family by being uncooperative. The grandmother spends her time talking at, not to, family members who “didn’t seem to hear her” (O’Connor). The few that do are disrespectful and fed up with her, and both of her grandchildren in the story are ready and eager to talk back to her. …show more content…

Bailey’s indifference towards his mother is indicative of what their relationship has been over the years from his childhood and into his adulthood. Bailey seems sick of the grandmother living with and being around him. The grandmother is very irritating to her family, and that shows throughout the story by their unwillingness to speak with her.
“A Good Man is Hard to Find” is set in the mid 20th century, and presumably in the middle of the civil rights movement. The grandmother is an outcast from her own family by still expressing her outdated beliefs about African-Americans. The grandmother refers to African-

Americans as “pickaninnies” and “niggers” throughout the story, and tells a few racist stories.
None of her racist remarks are even acknowledged by her own family, which speaks wonders to her outdated opinions. The grandmother tells of a love interest who brought her a

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