In Flannery O’Connors “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the reader is introduced to a family who undergoes a tragic incident that would have been avoided. As the grandmother of the family got her son, wife, and three children to agree on a road trip which they thought would be fun. But it was not until the grandmother realized they were not where she thought she was in Tennessee and they suffered through a brutal car accident. The family managed to be okay up until the murderer on the news known as the Misfit shows up to where the car accident occurred. The Misfit and his two other partners then choose that they will execute the family since they had the opportunity handed to them.
There is something which occurred in his childhood that triggered the Misfit to want to commit these violence. The Misfits name plays a significant role in the story. This character feels out of place in the world and different from everyone else. There is an innocent gesture in the story the Misfit claims the reason for his name is because he can’t make what all he has done wrong fit the
In the 1953 short story titled “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, readers are given a glimpse of what the end of the story may look like through use of foreshadowing, symbolism, and other literary techniques. Although the story looks to be an innocent story of a family who travels to Florida for vacation at the start of it, readers soon find out that the story has a darker twist to it. This family trip turns violent and this gruesome ending can easily represent the violence taking place in America during the time this story was written by O’Connor and even today. The short story starts off with a family of six- parents, a grandmother, and three children-
The criminal doesn’t like this outcome, but comes to accept this. The story revolves around a man named the Misfit, Bobby Lee, a grandmother and her family. In the book, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” by Flannery O’Connor,” the theme of the story is about how our past is always a part of us and accepting it. The
This conversation in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” between The Misfit, an infamous criminal in Georgia, and his accomplice Bobby Lee reveals the senseless views of not only The Misfit, but also the grandmother he just murdered. Both characters appear to be different, yet they feel authorized at some point in the story to assert their irrational judgments. Towards the end of her life the grandmother finally shows empathy depicting her as the lesser of two evils. While The Misfit acknowledges the grandmother’s moment of goodness, his cynical thinking ultimately leads him to seemingly rationalize his murders when he implies that his barbaric actions are meaningless.
The grotesque psychopathic nature of the characters in Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” ironically shows how a good man does not truly exist through the revelation and proclamation of what characteristics a good man possess. In the story The Misfit shows characteristics of a psychopath by escaping prison and killing an innocent family. However, The Misfit isn’t the only character in the short story to show psychopathic tendencies. The grandma also shows some characteristics of a psychopath because she does not care or show remorse for her family who was brutally murdered
You have to think something isn’t alright in The Misfits head. That statement also makes you think that this guy can snap at any moment and towards the end of the story when the grandmother says to The Misfit, “why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” (O’Connor pg.715), the guy just snapped and shot her. So maybe he doesn’t fit well with emotions.
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
A convict and a grandmother are more alike than the common one may think. In Flannery O’Conner’s story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, demonstrates a similarity between the Misfit and the grandmother showing that good and evil are not the same in all individuals. O’Conner uses these certain characters to show the difference between good and bad, but in the end both the grandmother and the Misfit show a change in character. Flannery O’Conner’s catholic background has influenced all her stories. O’Conner’s family was one of the first to live in her hometown of Milledgeville, Georgia she also attended parochial school.
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.
Redemption is the act of being saved from acts of evil and sin. The debate of whether human nature is redeemable or not has been one to plaque religious scholars. In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, this question continues in the interactions between the characters; the most notable being the Grandmother of a rather horrible family and the Misfit, a murderer. While on a road trip, these two characters’ paths collide and lead to a rather unfortunate end where the Grandmother and her family are killed. While many readers believe the ending creates and overall negative tone of the story, some believe that there is a hope for redemption; the story’s author O’Connor who is a devoted Catholic included.
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 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.
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.
In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the readers are drawn to a family with the grandmother as the matriarch headed to Florida. The grandmother can be seen as domineering and self-righteous in her behavior towards her grandchildren. Thus, the themes of conflict in the family are very prominent themes in the story with O’Connor highlighting the grandmother’s character to drive home this message. The family begins to get ready to go on their vacation to Florida for about three days.
