The readers are first introduced to the character of the Grandmother. Even the first sentence of the short story makes it apparent of what the story will be about “The Grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida.” (source) By using this sentence as is, O’ Connor wants to immediately tell the readers that the character of the grandmother is a self-centered person who only preoccupies herself with her own desires. It is first implied that the Grandmother is a true and proper ‘Southern Christian lady’, but her actions seem contrary to that belief as she only uses religion to back up her own thoughts as well as sacrificing her faith in order to save her life. “Maybe he [Jesus] didn’t raise the dead…” Also the overall personality of the grandmother is a cruel and hypocritical one which completely opposes the religion she identifies with. The Grandma was religious only when it suited her or backed one of her points up. She was never properly spiritual, but just a hypocrite, until something clicks in her during her last moments in life. “She also realizes the flimsiness of her old form of Christianity: her religion has consisted of nothing more than platitudes which she manipulated to suit her own purposes and with which she buttressed her personal illusion of righteousness” (Douglass …show more content…
“The misfit ‘didn’t see no sun, but don’t see no cloud either.” (oconnor) Humanity is not perfection, it’s the complete opposite. The misfit is not necessarily good in any sense, but at some point in his life, he must have been. It also wouldn’t be accurate to describe him as demonic either, due to his genuine politeness and *niceness**?. “In a way, all of O’Connor’s characters are ‘misfits,’ marginalized by their own limits and refusal to welcome God’s grace…” (Marie Lienard: From Manners to mystery: flannery O’connors