The Misfit: A Short Story
The True Outsiders Do you know what it’s like to be an outsider? The novel “The Outsiders” written by Susan Eloise Hinton in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 1960’s is about two social groups. The first social groups were the Socs, they were the rich and privileged kids. The second groups were the greasers, they were poor and treated as the outcast.
Since being a lady is a big part of what the grandmother considers moral, the Misfit obviously doesn’t abide by the same moral code of ethics as she does. She desperately calls him a good man, as though appealing to some value deep within that he couldn’t deny. Her definition of “good” is skewed though, resting on her belief that the Misfit isn’t like most people. The grandmother’s application of the label “good” shows that it does not mean “kind” or “moral”. “Good” simply means whatever ideals align with hers.
rom the story, the author uses a interesting situational irony as introduction to point out the family indifferent. For example, “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee” (O’Connor 337). This shows that the grandmother was a selfish person. She only wanted to east Tennessee so that she used a reason “The Misfit [a crazy killer] is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida” (O’Connor 337) to satisfy her individual wants.
Noteworthy experiences can set off the track of your life. In the novel The Misfits by James Howe, the protagonist undergoes a moving emotional change. Bobby faces bullying and self-doubt which causes a journey of self-exploration. Although Bobby Goodspeed was solicitous towards others, he could never inspire himself.
The Misfit knows who he is and does not pretend to be otherwise, unlike the old lady. With a show of unpretentiousness, he clearly states, “Nome, I ain’t a good man” (O’Connor 427). In the end, the antagonist enlightens the Grandmother with his brutal honesty, and her “head cleared for an instance” (O’Connor 430). In the final moments of her life, she is able to drop all pretenses and view evil in the form of the Misfit as something she can accept within herself by exclaiming, “Why you’re one of my babies” (O’Connor 430). Ironically, at the moment she reaches out to him, he kills her.
While Autumn and Mathew are identified as misfits because they are feared, Sydney and Lyle are identified as so because of the family they are born into. Sydney becomes an outcast once his father is accused of burning down Leo McVicer's mill. After that he becomes "trapped in his own father's fortune" (Richards, 13) meaning that there is nothing to do to make people not see him as the mad son of the bad father. Lyle's fortune also becomes linked to it becomes he is a victim of the "Henderson horror" (Richards, 17) as well. Lyle says: "we were such outcasts" (Richards, 199) and that is because his father is an "outcast" so he is automatically one as well.
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
I recognized you at once” which caused the Misfit to say, “Yes’m. But it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t reckernized me.” This causes her own son to whisper horrible things about her. After the announcement of this serial killer, the grandmother looks out for herself by asking the Misfit, “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you” (Kelly 362)? This shows her carelessness about everybody except her well-being.
Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a short story that makes readers question what truly makes a good person. The grandmother in the story believes she knows what a good person is, but the Misfit challenges her morals which makes her question what makes a good person. Both the Misfit and the grandmother judge people based on their moral code but one of their moral code is more authentic than the other. In her final moments of life does the misfit make her see what really makes a person good? The grandmother doesn’t seem to develop in the story until she faces life or death at the end, she may have never developed if have it not been for the Misfit.
As Walter lowered himself slowly onto the folding chair he looked up at Scotty who was lost in a fuzzy haze of tears and smudged Clark Kent glasses. His constant wiping of his nose meant constant cleaning of his glasses and when he cried he was nearly blind. Walter reached up and took his friend's tray, then grabbing him gently by the elbow, guided him into his seat. The table had been provided by Mrs. Marchant, the lunch room monitor, after several failed attempts to force assimilation of the two misfits into one of the hybrid tables. "Blow your nose, man.
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.
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
When we finally arrived I was expecting some notes about what I needed to know from the pilot, but that’s apparently not how it worked. When we were above the arena the pilot doesn’t wait, he opens the door and jabs me with a spear. I have no choice but to jump out of the helicopter, otherwise I would be turned into a shish kabob. Luckily though I grabbed the spear and took it with me as I plummet towards the ground. I brace myself for the hard landing, but landing on snow isn’t very painful.
misfits were gonna do next as I know I was. They took turns rubbing each other all over their bodies, noticeably favoring the groin and buttocks, pretending to have intercourse with every trash can in the area, yelling and just attracting as many sets of eyes as they possibly could. The girls laughed at all of this, of course, and encouraged every bit of it. They touched the guys in a sensual manner, seemingly feeling no real threat, due to the boy 's obvious preference for members of the same sex. While they all were graphically obscene and simply overbearing in their attention seeking, one of the boys (the Asian, who wore glasses and was dressed in solid black with pink and purple accenting his black tee and jeans)was undeniably the "alpha".
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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