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Mental Illness In Flannery O Connor's A Rose Of

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Mental illness is hard to understand. People that have mental illnesses do not make it easily noticeable. Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” are two stories that have underlying issues that are not present at first glance of the text. Miss Emily in “A Rose for Emily” and the Misfit in “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” are characters that are more complex than how they are first presented. In their stories these two characters are constantly being gossiped about and are not being given the chance to be understood. Emily and the Misfit, although both misunderstood and isolated, are fundamentally different characters. Unlike Emily, who was not given good childhood circumstances, …show more content…

The Misfit did not have a known history of mental illness like Emily did. The trauma and isolation that Emily experiences causes her mental illness to develop earlier than the townspeople expect. Her mental illness is unknown to anyone in the town; the only thing that the town knows is that “ her great-aunt had gone completely crazy,’ so they expect Emily to go crazy also. At first the town felt sorry for Emily when her father died because they knew that he was the only person that Emily was attached to. During Emily's father’s death she experiences a state of shock which causes her to believe that her father is not dead. Even though the town tried to feel bad for Miss Emily, the town still loves to gossip, so they still like to talk about her “being left alone, and a pauper” …show more content…

Throughout the story the misfit is getting introduced as a bad guy because he was in jail and killed somebody, but as the text progresses his character begins to change. The Misfit’s anxiety and ocd becomes apparent as he is further illustrated. When first seeing the family he is nice to the family, kindly saying “good afternoon,” until the grandmother recognizes him as the Misfit (O’Connor). This causes him to have a reaction which might be subtle to the naked eye. The kind of reaction that they misfit is experiencing is similar to anxiety. After the recognition he begins to turn into the person that the grandmother read about in the news just earlier in the story. This person is the one that escapes from jail and commits a crime. He instructs the mother to call the children over to her because the children make him “nervous,” (O’Connor). This is his first sign of anxiety and mental illness in the story. His behavior throughout the rest of the encounter is similar to this as he draws “ a little circle in the ground with the butt of his gun,” to help calm him down (O’Connor). He also explains that he does not remember the crime that he committed which got him into jail, which is showing that after he committed the crime he went into a state of shock causing him to

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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.

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