ipl-logo

The Misfit Symbolism

851 Words4 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. It can be made clear that the Misfit and his two Hench men stole clothes from their victims after killing them. When first seen the Misfit was without a shirt, but then the grandmother recalls saying “Thow me that shirt, Bobby Lee”. The evil portion of this is that they not only kill the family, but they take their clothes and leave them in the dark forest without a trace. The Misfit …show more content…

In comparison to Dante's moral hierarchy, the Grandmother would be a great sinner even though she thought otherwise of herself. She was intently selfish in herself and only thought of her when the Misfit was extracting the family members out to the woods to be killed, she only wanted to save herself and not the others. Dante would rank this kind of act as a greater sin and the Grandmother would end up in the 9th circle of hell and in the Gluttony portion of it. Color symbolism provides a sequence of events that will unfold when reading, in a good man is hard to find the family described a black battered hearse-like automobile. A hearse is considered to be a funeral car where the coffin gets placed in. This foreshadowed the family’s death when they first saw the vehicle crossing the road in front of them. The occupants inside the vehicle did not have the proper attire to even look as if they were workers driving a hearse, considering they were wearing black trousers with a red shirt, and another wearing khaki pants and a blue striped coat. The proper attire for such an event would be to wear full black, but that was not the case and the author …show more content…

The cat is a major contender in the story due to the fact that the cat was brought onto the trip in a secret manner by the Grandmother and in the end the cat is the cause of the family's death. The cat also ends up rubbing against the Misfits legs instead of going to the Grandmother, which was the cat's rightful owner. It is mentioned that the Misfit was categorized as a snake for when the Grandmother touched him on the shoulder he jumped back as he was afraid and

Show More
Related
869 Words | 4 Pages

Cherrylog Road James Dickey’s poem, Cherrylog Road, is clearly an exhilarating, narrative poem. The speaker of this piece is a young man reminiscing of a past love affair that was forbidden. This is a provocative poem, told in the first person and is full of figurative language and symbolism. The setting of this poem is in a rural part of an unnamed Southern state, off of Highway 96 at Cherrylog Road. It is at the peak of a summer afternoon in a junkyard full of discarded cars.

Read More
1018 Words | 5 Pages

Myles Hypse February 3rd, 2017 English 1B 3:30-4:40pm Two Psychopaths Both of these stories give the reader a good look into the eyes of two psychopaths, who both refuse to take no for an answer. One of them, Arnold Friend although at first appearing friendly, is nothing more than a malicious predator, similar in kind to The Misfit, who greets his victims in a much more sinister way. The two characters, when stood side by side, almost seemed as they become one, yet are polar opposites. When one compares the character Arnold Friend to that of The Misfit, more similarities come forward than differences.

Read More
125 Words | 1 Pages

Hannery O’ Connor’s short story is about a Misfit that has a conflict in his life which lead him into making bad decisions in the future that harm him. In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, O’ Connor uses symbolic archetypes by using the grandmother as a symbol of love and care and also uses the Misfit as a symbol of violence and death. The situational archetype used is when the Misfit takes vengeance on people that come his way. This is because of self-petty. The setting archetype used in the short story takes place in the dirt road where all the violence happened.

Read More
531 Words | 3 Pages

BLOOD SIMPLE’s mise-en-scene starts off with the lighting of the car ride, it is dark, the characters’ are draped in shadows, the outside world is a blur, and the mood is being set for the follow on scenes. BLOOD SIMPLE’s opening composition also establishes a central theme for the audience that this movie will be gloomy, have immoral implications and be filled with betrayal. The lighting in the movie is constant throughout with heavy shadows, low backlighting, which is until the last scene where the light brightens as the action falls. Key props were found throughout the film, however one of the major props was Abby’s hand gun.

Read More
959 Words | 4 Pages

Finally, another piece of evidence is, “The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest” (O’Connor 13). The most condemning piece of evidence against the Misfit is the fact that he murdered the grandmother point-blank in cold blood. He did not even hesitate in ending her life. As you can see, the misfit has given into sin for us whole life, and it has become a normality for

Read More
772 Words | 4 Pages

As she hides the cat away, it is almost as if she is hiding herself and hiding her “mistakes”. As the story moves on, they meet Red Sam. He complains to the grandmother about an incident with a customer, “”Two fellers come in here last week,” Red Sammy said, “driving a Chrysler. It was a old beat-up car

Read More
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.

Read More
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

Read More
946 Words | 4 Pages

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

Read More
1016 Words | 5 Pages

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.

Read More
609 Words | 3 Pages

In “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the author uses the grandmother a lot for the sole purpose of bringing sin and redemption out. Throughout the story, the grandmother repeatedly criticized both her son and daughter-in-law, she always seemed to be lying and messing with other people's feelings. The Grandmother considers herself morally superior to others because she is a “lady,” therefore she freely and frequently judges others.

Read More
1393 Words | 6 Pages

The violence that we do not get to see for ourselves are the crimes the Misfit committed before the story began. The story begins with the grandmother telling Bailey to “read here what it says he did to these people’” (O’Connor 575). These crimes are violent murders that the Misfit committed beforehand. This displays the criminal world that we live in.

Read More
1601 Words | 7 Pages

The Misfit is seen as being a part of reality and only believing what he sees with physical evidence. He also stays true to his morals of what he believes is right and wrong, especially when it comes to showing the equality of no mercy among the family members. Both characters reveal their use of Jesus, the spiritual battle that inhibits them and their concepts of reality. All of this gives insight to how there are no good or bad characters at the finale of this story. The battle of morality between the two characters only shows the

Read More
1254 Words | 6 Pages

In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” she uses writing skills such as symbolism and imagery to get across her different themes to the reader’s with plenty of room for self-interpretation. Though O’Connor’s work could be defined as cynical, she does an excellent job of writing in the third person with her uncomplicated structure of sentences leaving plenty of room for her character 's thoughts, feelings, and actions to get across the realism of our world. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a battle between a grandmother with a rather artificial sense of goodness, and a criminal who symbolizes evil. The grandmother treats goodness as having good manners, and coming from a family of higher class, but at the end of the story comes to

Read More
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?"

Read More

More about The Misfit Symbolism

Related Topics

Open Document