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The Grandmother In Flannery O 'Connor's The Misfit'

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The grandmother can be characterized as a misfit in the story because she originally wants to go to Tennessee but the rest of the family wants to go to Florida. This shows you that she is the only one that doesn’t conform to everyone else’s opinion. She tries to convince everyone about the serial killer going around named “The Misfit” and how they might encounter it, but they choose to ignore her, this also foreshadows the events to come. Even though she didn’t want to go to Florida she doesn’t want to stay home, and also trying to convince her son’s kids but they just end up making fun of her. She agrees to go to Florida with them but can’t leave her precious cat behind so she takes him because she is afraid that it might kill itself …show more content…

Her desire to go to an old plantation she had been at before she didn’t realize that it wasn’t on their way to Florida but in actual Tennessee. By the moment she had realized they were in the wrong place she had kicked the basket which was holding the cat, and thus it sprung onto her sons face and caused them to crash. The dad gave in because they grandmother had stirred up their curiosity by telling them there was something secret there. When they were getting ready to get on the road toward Florida, she was the only one to dress up because she wanted to stand out in case she was on the road dead, they would had known that she was a lady. The time she was born in showed her character because she would referred to black people as the “n” word. Also she knew about plantations which was common in the south and during slave time periods. In a sense she was out of place time wise due to her age and her culture. When they crash they encounter the “Misfit” and try to reason with him but his psychotic mentality prevents him from feeling any restraint or remorse in murdering all of them including the kids and they baby. She is the only one that tries to convince him that he is a good man and should spare

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Two features I thought were interesting in the book was the observance of urban slavery, although Tennessee is still in the South, and the amount of help Sally received from Whites in the community. Probably because Tennessee is considered the ‘Upper South’ they have a concept of urban slavery, where slaves contract themselves to work, what I was not expecting was the ‘quasi slave’ (21). With this status, she could rent out her own space, could go about freely and ultimately had the economical function similar to that of a free person, however she was still under threat of being sold at any time, because she owned. Because of this unclear and murky social status, she was adamant about ensuring her children became free men.

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Being light skinned and mixed blood her aunts always managed a way to make her know she was a Negro. Her aunts forbade her to talk about her colored skinned friends forcing her to suppress her feelings and desires to be with her own kind. At a very young age Clare started to figure out that she wasn’t bad looking and she could possibly pass. When Clare finally passes and marries John Bellew the father of her child a wealthy racist white man she easily gains all her wealth and material needs from him, so she wonders why Leon 2 other women like her don’t try and pass like her in order to get all their material needs and riches. Irene Redfield on the other hand married a respectable middle‐class African‐American physician named Brian and has two kids.

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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.

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1465 Words | 6 Pages

Her image of a prim and proper Southern gentlewoman clashes with the down-to-earth, easy-going lifestyle of the lower middle class. Her incongruity as a refined Southern gentlewoman in an industrial, lower-middle class New Orleans neighbourhood marks her status as an outsider and contributes to her final

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833 Words | 4 Pages

Despite the grandmother’s attempts, the vacation remains set for Florida. Staying true to her Southern belle roots, the grandmother piles into the car wearing a navy blue dress with lace, a pinned sachet of violets, along with white gloves. It is stated that,“In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would at once know that she was a lady.” O’Connor once again employs irony to foreshadow the family’s death, while amplifying her macabre humor. In a twist of fate the grandmother led herself and her family to The Misfit,

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1371 Words | 6 Pages

and they are all planning a trip to Florida. Although it has been decided that they are going to Florida, the grandmother is frustrated and tries to convince her son and his family that they should go to Tennessee instead since more family lives there and there are sights to see there. She also argues that going to Florida would only put the family in danger as there was a serial killer on the loose who goes by the name of “Misfit”. This, in itself, already raises a red flag for readers since they just so happen to be travelling to a place where a serial killer is running loose. Despite the grandmother’s protests against their trip to Florida, they all get in the car and begin their journey.

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772 Words | 4 Pages

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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915 Words | 4 Pages

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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1208 Words | 5 Pages

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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583 Words | 3 Pages

Causing problems for the family reveals just how discriminatory they were. Dying was easier than the truth; there was "no hope" for anyone if the girl was around. “It was decided I should die” (Atwood). This was the only way to not burden her sister who was to get married (Atwood). Her actions had become twisted and none of them were human, as if every discriminatory thing everyone said had become true.

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At that moment, she started as a woman of faith then it later spunned into a confused soul questioning her faith. Moreover, I noticed the cat being a talked about character in the story. The cat is a symbol of the grandmother herself. All the characteristics the old woman portrayed, the cat has it as well. For the reason that, in the story after the car accident the cat clung to Bailey’s neck

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• Mrs. Dalton has a very large role in the circumstances of the crime that Bigger commits; murdering Mary. She gives Bigger the way to escape without getting caught revealing that he smothered Mary in her bedroom. This can be considered somewhat symbolic of the racism in American society at this time. Due to Mrs. Dalton not being able to see Bigger caused bigger to jump into violence, which connects to the white people not seeing the black people as individuals. This is a big part of why people lived most of their lives in fear and hating white people for it.

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851 Words | 4 Pages

The Misfit was a purely evil character while the Grandmother had good intentions. Color symbolism was used throughout the story to give an insight of what is going to happen eventually. The animals also played a large portion of the symbolism attached to… The Misfit along with Hiram and Bobby Lee were all purely evil characters that killed everyone in his way.

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1601 Words | 7 Pages

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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844 Words | 4 Pages

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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