Eli Conklin Mrs. Polesiak English 12 AP 12 February 2023 “A Good Man is Hard to Find” Psychological Lens In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, the story reveals the author’s belief and commentary that every person has some capability to be impacted and changed by good. The story works through the grandmother’s comments on the nature of man, in which she originally acts as if modern generations are evil and lack goodness, but she eventually is shown to believe that everyone has some goodness in them. To begin, she is largely pessimistic about human nature and acts in a superior way when she talks to Red Sam about the tendencies of people. Her comment that “‘People are certainly not nice like they used to be’” (O’Connor 205) …show more content…
When confronting the Misfit, she has undergone a mental spiral caused by her insistence, against her previous comments, that the Misfit is a good man. She does not seem to believe what she is saying for most of the confrontation, but then “the grandmother’s head cleared for an instant. She saw the man’s face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, ‘Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!’” (211). In this moment, the grandmother realizes that she has a commonality with the Misfit, and that they both truly do have some good in them. Her observation that his face was momentarily like hers causes her to see the emotion that the Misfit is experiencing, and she makes the connection between his emotion and hers. She finally is transformed by this realization and her own actions of kindness, as she died and “her face [smiled] up at the cloudless sky” (212). The goodness that the grandmother had been seeking throughout the entire story had at last been realized through her own actions of kindness toward the Misfit, who was also momentarily affected and taken back by her grace towards