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Analysis Of Mark Twain's 'The Misfit'

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1. The grandmother represents the conventional social values such as that she considers herself a lady. For instance, she is dressed very elegantly for a road trip as mentioned on page 965, “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” She believes children should be respectful of their native states and parents. The religious values represented by her are that prayers and Jesus would help the sinner. These values are exposed in the course of the story in various situations. For example, the grandmother persuades her son not to go to Florida, and she feels that children should listen to their parents. She tries to convince the Misfit to pray so that he feels better. The Misfit means …show more content…

The philosophic position the Misfit unknowingly gives voice to in rationalizing his actions is that he is a victim of the circumstances happened to him. As mentioned on page 972, the Misfit says, “I never was a bad boy that I remember of.” The Misfit believes he was innocent and still had to serve time in a penitentiary. The atmosphere of the penitentiary was so traumatic that he lost his innocence and turned into a criminal. When the Misfit says that Jesus has thown everything off balance. He means that Jesus forgives the sinner thus the sinner does not feel guilty. Perhaps that is the case with misfit where he knows that he is guilty of his crimes but at the same time he thinks he is innocent. At the other instance where the Misfit uses the same statement, he means that if Jesus was the only one who raised the dead and this disrupts the balance. The Misfit’s view of reality is more honest because he accepts he is not a good man. On the other hand, the grandmother lives in past and refuses to accept the changes. The grandmother gives importance to the appearances whereas the misfit does not care about the appearance. Moreover, when the grandmother was at gunpoint, she tends to call an escaped convict a good man when she knows he is a dangerous

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She only looks for problems in the world around her and is quick to criticize people other than herself. Her interaction with The Misfit clearly shows how selfish she truly is. When The Misfit shows up after their car veers off the road, the grandmother and her family’s life is put in danger. She never once seems to care about the fate of her grandchildren when their lives are threatened by The Misfit (Mitchell). Instead, the first thing that the grandmother does is think about herself and question The Misfit’s will to murder a lady (referring to herself).

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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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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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