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Manipulation In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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The Grandmother is a well-dressed and a proper southern lady. She is also the center of action in the short story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find". The grandmother seems very suspicious at first, and thinks her son Bailey will be forever small and has to abide by her rules. In her eyes she is never been wrong but knows it all. When we become up-close and personal with the grandmother we see that she's this bad person, which she appears to be old-fashioned, manipulative, and self-serving as a whole.

The grandmother is an elderly southern old-fashioned woman stuck in her old ways. Flannery O'Connor states, "Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" She said and pointed to a negro child standing in the door of the shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, …show more content…

To give one example of manipulation, Flannery O'Connor, Georgia State author of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", writes that "You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?"(421). The grandmother is trying to make the misfit vulnerable, even though he has already killed everyone but her. She's begging the misfit for her life. Every one of those people would still be alive if it was not for the grandmother. She did not have much hope left anyways for her life because she annoyed the misfit with her ugly and selfish ways. In another quote the grandmother implies that the misfit is a good man by stating, "Yes it's a beautiful day," said the grandmother. "Listen, " she said, "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" (421). The grandmother doesn't know the misfit from Adam, yet she already gave him a persona that he has to match. Besides the grandmother has already called Red Sammy a good man, and by now it is already apparent that its feigned. She is only trying to convince the misfit that he is a good man because she wants to be freed, and her life is in shambles. Also, the grandmother has already gone back on her word multiple of times, calling the misfit a big, bad, and scary man. Now all of the sudden he is a good man. Therefore, the grandmother still has not changed a

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