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A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

981 Words4 Pages

The Misfit’s Transformation in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” Flannery O’Connor is known for her grotesque tales, and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is no exception. The story follows a family’s journey to Florida and their encounter with a wanted criminal, the Misfit. Unfortunately, the family is quickly killed off by the Misfit’s henchmen, leaving the Grandmother alone trying to persuade the Misfit to not kill her. O’Connor presents the ending in an ambiguous way, asking readers if the Misfit will remain to be the same criminal he was after confronting the Grandmother. O’Connor implements details to convey that the Misfit was positively affected by the Grandmother.
Firstly, the Misfit revaluates the meaning of his life. Before …show more content…

The removal of the glasses signifies a positive change on the Misfit, similarly to the removal of “meanness” in his statement about life. Glasses change the perspective of how a person sees the world. The Misfit sees the grandmother as a good person after she has redeemed herself. Now without his glasses, O’Connor states on page 133 that the Misfit’s eyes were “red-rimmed, pale and defenseless-looking.” The red-rimmed eyes indicate that he was crying after the murder. Additionally, the glasses-wearing Misfit recoiled and shot the Grandmother when she tried to touch his shoulder; the defenseless-looking Misfit allows the cat to rub on his leg and even picks the cat up. The new Misfit is not aggressive; he did not push or brush away the cat. The cat is a symbol of the Grandmother because of how it rubs against the Misfit’s leg trying to calm him down like the Grandmother. Hence, the Misfit must preserve the cat since it is the only memory trigger of the Grandmother. Thus, the Misfit is troubled by his actions and must keep an artifact from the event to prevent him from committing the same crime in the future. Similar to “meanness”, the Misfit’s glasses are also removed and positively affected his life following the Grandmother’s …show more content…

The Grandmother’s transformation left a serious impact on the Misfit. Through the change in personal beliefs he found a different part of himself. O’Connor implies that the removal of his glasses signifies the turning point of the Misfit. As all the events that follow the Grandmother’s death were a positive change in a different direction for a person like him. Hence, he no longer finds “meanness” in life. His glasses changed his perspective on life. Lastly, he was shocked by the Grandmother’s quick transformation that left him with a metaphor to describe her. The Misfit chose to forget his past crimes because they were meaningless to him. The Grandmother on the other hand, formed a dent that would positively affect his

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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

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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.

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(6:27). O 'Connor presents both the view of the Misfit as a fellow human being in pain, and the feeling of love for him, as a gift from God. The grandmother as a human being, is prone towards evil and selfishness, so she could never have come to feel such love without God 's help, as this man was going to kill her. This moment of grace is incredibly important in the story. The Misfit kills the grandmother, withdrawing from her and what seems foreign to him (human compassion), but the grandmother already had her moment of redemption.

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