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Misfit In A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

1577 Words7 Pages

In the beginning of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the character the Misfit is a criminal that is foreshadowed in a newspaper. When the Misfit and grandmother first meet, in order for her life to be spared, the grandmother continues to convince the Misfit that he is a good man. Nonetheless, the Misfit still believes similarly like Jesus, he creates havoc too. The Misfit is aware that he and Jesus are quite equal; despite that he is a criminal and Jesus was a perfect man. It is interesting that the character would make an analogy with the Son of God. O’Connor portrays the character, the Misfit, as if he was Jesus in the story. We first get a description of the character, the Misfit, based off of his name alone. A misfit is an individual who continually seeks trouble and believes that their punishment is not fair or just towards them. O’Connor, the author, …show more content…

It is noted, as a child he struggled with accepting the truth. As a child, the Misfit’s father realized that he was not usual child, he needed to know the answers to important questions and not be oblivious like the rest. O’Connor allows the Misfit to reflect on his past with his father. The Misfit restates, “‘You know’, Daddy said, ‘it’s some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it’s others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He’s going to be into every-thing!” (363). His Father did foreshadow that his son, would be into many matters, some being good and others being bad in hopes of answering the question why. The Misfit remembers that his Father claimed that he was a “different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters” (363). Jesus is similar and can testify that He is different from other humans in the world. God, Jesus’ Father, knew that His only Son would be different, in a sense of being born without sin, in order to be the Savior of the

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In her short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor tackles the issue of grace, showing that no matter the person, everyone can attain and earn grace. The grandmother and the Misfit, though they appear to be quite different people, are both the same at the core: They are sinners in need of Christ. The Misfit and the grandmother are both capable of change and accepting God, but only the grandmother reaches this revelation before her death. Grace is one of the most important ideas in the Bible and Christianity. Grace is “the love of God shown to the unlovely; the peace of God given to the restless; the unmerited favor of God,” (Holcomb).

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There is something which occurred in his childhood that triggered the Misfit to want to commit these violence. The Misfits name plays a significant role in the story. This character feels out of place in the world and different from everyone else. There is an innocent gesture in the story the Misfit claims the reason for his name is because he can’t make what all he has done wrong fit the

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In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the author, Flannery O'Connor, demonstrates how a family vacation can quickly face a violent end, caused by a criminal known as “The Misfit.” Looking at the short story through a feminist point of view, one can quickly gather that O’Connor uses the traditional gender roles right from the beginning of the story. As reading the title, it automatically suggests the men in this short story are untrustworthy, not prevalent, and dangerous. With that being said, the female characters in this story are viewed in the eyes of how a woman should act.

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A Good Man Is Hard To Find Essay

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She has made a decision based off her own desires, and it has put her as well as her family in a predicament. After making this wrong decision, the grandmother has absolutely no power. It is also here that the grandmother and her family come in contact with the Misfit. The Misfit is an escaped murderer who the family had heard about being on the loose prior to leaving on their trip. Although he is accompanied by two other men, the Misfit is a man who acts on his own independent values; we see this very clearly in his name.

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A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

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I sympathize the least with The Misfit. In the story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" written by Flannery O'Connor. The Misfit is the antagonist when he shoots the family traveling in the middle of the night. From his actions, he reveals that he is a want to equate the Misfit esociopath, with possible narcissistic personality traits. The Misfit seems like a kind man in the south when approaching them, but then the family sees the guns and get nervous.

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A convict and a grandmother are more alike than the common one may think. In Flannery O’Conner’s story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, demonstrates a similarity between the Misfit and the grandmother showing that good and evil are not the same in all individuals. O’Conner uses these certain characters to show the difference between good and bad, but in the end both the grandmother and the Misfit show a change in character. Flannery O’Conner’s catholic background has influenced all her stories. O’Conner’s family was one of the first to live in her hometown of Milledgeville, Georgia she also attended parochial school.

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A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

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Some critics see this as him just trying turn things around to benefit himself and to make himself seem less evil, but I see it as his is just trying to understand the world. He also seems very wise when talking to the grandmother about his character. “Nome, I ain’t a good man,’

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This notion of redemption is primarily seen with the Misfit and his character development away from the pleasure of a murderer. Had it not been for the collision of the Grandmother and his paths, redemption would have been unlikely, even unachievable, for him. O’Connor intended for this story to have a positive ending, despite the death toll that is present at the end of the story. With her Catholic beliefs, the small act of the Grandmother’s compassion and the Misfit’s questioning of his morals are rather impactful to each of their redemptions. Perhaps O’Connor’s religious views could be insightful to religious scholars on the question of whether human nature is

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Good Man Is Hard To Find Response

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The Misfit 's mind is one of the most complicated of any villain in O 'Connor’s stories and in all literature. His mental state is most evident in "the scene between the Grandmother and the Misfit at the climax of the story" (Walls 3) This recent escapee 's psyche can be described as "tails short of the athlete’s morality, for he plays by no one 's rules except his own" (Fike). This mental state is typical of most criminals but the Misfit’s perception on religion is not so conventional. Usually, when a person commits a heinous act and if the person is spiritual they will say God told them to do it.

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Violence In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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Moreover, when the Misfit and the two men shoot the whole family in the woods, it illustrates the sinister and cruel world that needs saving. The violent car crash that causes the family to encounter the Misfit in the first place adds to the violent display that O’Connor creates of the world. O’Connor uses the violence in the story to shock the readers into self-awareness (Larson 1). She uses this self-awareness to bring to light the religious theme of redemption and grace for the corrupted. O’Connor’s

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The Misfit is seen as being a part of reality and only believing what he sees with physical evidence. He also stays true to his morals of what he believes is right and wrong, especially when it comes to showing the equality of no mercy among the family members. Both characters reveal their use of Jesus, the spiritual battle that inhibits them and their concepts of reality. All of this gives insight to how there are no good or bad characters at the finale of this story. The battle of morality between the two characters only shows the

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(6:27). O 'Connor presents both the view of the Misfit as a fellow human being in pain, and the feeling of love for him, as a gift from God. The grandmother as a human being, is prone towards evil and selfishness, so she could never have come to feel such love without God 's help, as this man was going to kill her. This moment of grace is incredibly important in the story. The Misfit kills the grandmother, withdrawing from her and what seems foreign to him (human compassion), but the grandmother already had her moment of redemption.

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Southern Gothic Elements In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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The misfit gains awareness of human morals when he kills the grandmother and he says, "She would have been a good woman...if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life" (O 'Connor 1020), he then realized that she wasn 't all that good. O 'Connor did a good job of interpreting the grandmother as a way to put away the values of the old Southern America; she also interprets the Misfit as a type of common man who is defiantly not perfect which can a realistic version of the new Southern America. In "A Good Man is Hard to Find", the irritating grandmother cares more about matters such as her appearance and manners, she dressed her best for the car ride and the reason for her doing this is so that "In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would at once know that she was a lady." (O 'Connor 1010). The grandmother is a very selfish woman, the first thing she said to the Misfit is "You wouldn 't shoot a lady, would you?"

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