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Hard To Find

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The short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, is about a grandmother, her son Bailey, his wife, and their kids, the baby, John Wesley, and June Star, who are getting ready to go on a vacation. The family has a disagreement as to where they want to go between Florida and Tennessee, the grandmothers argument being that The Misfit, a killer, is heading towards Florida. On the day of the trip, the grandmother is the first one in the car and secretly brings her cat. During the car ride, the grandmother is constantly talking and telling stories; she tells them about a house she visited as a kid. The children get excited and want to visit it, and Bailey reluctantly goes in the direction the grandmother pointed out. It’s after …show more content…

He knows that he is not a good man. He believes that the punishment he has received didn’t fit his crime. The Misfit also believes that the world would be better off if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. When the grandmother and him were talking about religion he Although he is not a good man, he does feels a bit of compassion for the grandmother when Bailey makes her cry, he says “Lady… don’t you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don’t mean. I don’t reckon he meant to talk to you thataway.” But The Misfit also shows no remorse when he shoots the grandmother in the chest after she touches him.
The conflict symbolizes redemption, The Misfit symbolizes the evil that some must go through to reach the understanding of their own mistakes. The talk the grandmother and The Misfit have between them is mainly about religion, and what was done in the past, the talk leads to the grandmother having sympathy for him. The grandmothers moment of grace causes a terrible reaction from The Misfit. After The Misfit kills the grandmother he says “It’s no real pleasure in life,” which I think shows that the grandmother may have had some kind of impact on him in there discussion.
In the final moments of life, redemption could always be reached. In the last moments of her life, the grandmother was a good woman, she showed compassion and care in a time of danger and

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This ending is ironic considering that the grandmother never makes any reference to being religious before facing death. Also, she continuously reminds the Misfit of the fact that she is a lady in the hopes that it will have the same meaning to him as it does to her. However, not once does she try to spare the rest of her family. She is too busy groveling for her own life to give her family a second thought, even after the first gunshots have gone off. In the face of death, the grandmother constantly tries to convince the Misfit that he is a good man, even after he has ordered his men to kill her family, and presumably many others.

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The misfit in this short story is described as a traditional “good man” by the grandmother. For example, the misfit’s statement after Bailey shouts at the grandmother,

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“A Good Man is Hard to Find” narrates a story of a manipulative grandmother who always enforces a “moral code” on her family members. When her son, Bailey, announces a family vacation to Florida, the grandmother “[seizes] at every chance to change” his mind because she desires to “visit some of her connections” (137) in Tennessee instead. She reveals her crafty, “snake-like” nature as she “[rattles] the newspaper at [Bailey’s] bald head,” telling him about a murderer who “calls himself The Misfit” (137). When Bailey does not react, the grandmother “[wheels] around… and [faces] the children’s mother” (137). Realizing that the news of the Misfit will not influence the family into changing their travel plans, the grandmother devises a new tactic.

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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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