Quotes From The Grandmother By Thomas Hard To Find

Quote Paraphrase Analysis

[The grandmother:] "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did" (137).

The grandmother says she would never take her children in the direction of the criminal because if something happened she would not be able to live with herself.

The Misfit is introduced at the beginning of the story, giving the reader the feeling that this a foreshadowing of what is to come later in the story. It is also ironic because the grandmother is the one who takes everyone

Sunlight poured through the trees.

The trees sparkle as well as the people the family encounter. Even the Misfit (leader of killers) shows an almost imperceptible spark of goodness right at the end of the story, and this comparison with "mean" trees that sparkle illustrates the sacred view of life.

"In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin veiled fingers, "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said, and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack”

The respectfulness is tied to being a "gentleman" or a "lady," and is what she thinks it means to be good. What is ironic is the contrast between the "respect" she talked about and her use of the word "pickaninny" which is a disrespectful and discriminating term used to refer to slave children of the African-American race. Her mindset still belongs to an older southern generation who had racial prejudices, in my opinion.

"A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Everything is getting terrible. I remember that day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more" (142).

Sammy says a good man is hard to find and recalls being able to leave the screen door unlatched which he says you cannot do anymore.

Sammy complains that a good man is hard to find, meaning that a trustworthy person is hard to come by. To him, "good" means "respectable," just like the grandmother thinks. The grandmother considers herself a "good" person and the family will meet somebody who is considered "the other kind" to them so there is something ironic about what Sammy says. The encounter with evil will ask the question of what it really means to be good and the grandmother and Sammy might be wrong about what it means to be