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Misfit In John O Connor's Analysis

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The first time is when the grandmother is trying to convince Misfit that he is a decent person and should not kill her because she is a lady. She tells Misfit, “I just know you’re a good man … you’re not a bit common” (O’Connor 305). She tries to imply that a good man wouldn’t shoot a lady. Misfits don't consider himself to be a good man so that appeal doesn’t work. So, the grandmother then tries to tell Misfit he can be an honest person like his father. She tells him that it would be great if he could stop committing crimes and then he won’t have to worry about anybody being after him. This doesn’t work to change Misfit’s mind either since it is already too late. He is already on the run from the law. The grandmother next move is to try to tell Misfit maybe they locked him up on …show more content…

She is trying to manipulate his way of thinking about his situation. Misfit knows it wasn’t an accident because “they had papers on me” (O’Connor 306). Misfit doesn’t remember what he did, but he knows it not the crime they accused him of. He believes that it doesn’t matter what you do cause, “you’re going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it” (O’Connor 307). He even bases his name off this personal philosophy. He calls himself “The Misfit” because the punishments he has received doesn’t fit the crimes. The last and final conflict between the two comes when the grandmother tries to tell Misfit that he should pray again. Her ladylike convictions are finally in tatters and she is desperate. She even tries to bride Misfit and that fails. At this moment, Misfit goes into a rant about his thoughts on Jesus. He believes that Jesus shouldn’t have brought anyone back from the death and that he threw everything out of balance. The grandmother tries to agree with him but this just makes Misfit even more aggressive. He tells the grandmother “I wasn’t there so I can’t say He didn’t…if I had been there I would have known and I wouldn’t be like I am now” (O’Connor

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This causes the readers to realize she has had a “moment of grace” in her life. She says to him, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children” (O’ Conner 413). The Grandmother has a moment in which she sees the Misfit as a regular human being who is only a bad person because he has gone through a lot of pain and suffering. As soon as the Grandmother touches the Misfit he is shocked by her actions and her words to the point to where he shoots her three times in the chest.

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(O’Connor 417). In society, The Misfit is considered a criminal and a deviant, while the Grandmother would be perceived as an innocent, old woman. When looking at both of the characters actions one might say that The Misfit is more morally wrong than the Grandmother because he kills her in the end, however, the Grandmother is consistently manipulative and self-serving to the point of indirectly killing her family.

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Now she throws this term out there in an attempt to save her own life which it does not. The grandmother is very narcissistic. When she is shot the Misfit says “She would have been a good woman, if it had been some-body there to shoot her every minute of her life.” (O’Connor,

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The family stops for lunch at “The Tower and meets a character called Red Sammie Butts. This is where the grandmother strikes up a conversation with him. They talk about how it was back in the olden days when there were good people and Red Sammy states, “A good man is hard to find,” (Lawrence 410). The Misfit is the second major character in the story after the grandmother. The Misfit is an escaped criminal who comes in contact with the grandmother and her family when they get into an accident on the road.

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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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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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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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The grandmother begins to cry and the reader gets a hint of the Misfit’s distorted respect and courtesy of women. The old lady tries convince the Misfit that he is a good man, alluding to the title of the story once again. The Misfit makes a statement about how children make him nervous. O’Connor mentions again that the Misfit is embarrassed in front of the women emphasized by the fact that he is drawing circles in the dirt with the butt of his gun and his

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The reality between the Misfit and the Grandmother are very different and from this viewpoint it seems as if the Grandmother is a more dishonest and unfaithful person when it comes to selfishness. The Misfit does not express selfishness, rather he equally treats himself as he would with the people that he murdered. With two distinct differences in reality, both show similar signs of

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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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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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It started by describing the characters in great detail and elaborating on their mundane lives, but didn’t even give the name of the grandmother. Even though we don’t know The Misfit’s name who was a murderer he had more knowledge of the world and had things figured out, unlike the grandmother, and unlike grandmother The Misfit realizes his own faults. He said, “I ain’t a good man, but I ain’t the worst in the world either” (305). As much of a bad person that The Misfit is he still makes sense and can use deductive reasoning, so he is not entirely insane. She tries to convince The Misfit he is a good person just like her, but does not even believe it herself.

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