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The grandmother and the misfit
The grandmother and the misfit
The grandmother and the misfit
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More handpicked essays just for you.
The grandmother and the misfit
The grandmother and the misfit
The grandmother and the misfit
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
There were awkward wording throughout, and made it a little difficult to read. The extra names and dates that appeared throughout, sort of threw me on tangents and made it less understandable. I felt that at sometimes I was being thrown random facts in the most awkward moments but were all related to the story. Wexler shows that a lot of research went into this story long after it happened and does a great job remaining
So, when reading the story initially I was left with the impression that The Misfit was least sympathetic because he just killed an entire family forcing the grandmother to come to terms with their death before killing her off. As blunt and brutal as this situation is, it is also the most symbolic as the true villain of Poe's story is actually the grandmother. For instance, the grandmother constantly insists that The Misfit must be a good man, "I know you're a good man" (O' Connor 504) and "I just know you're a good man" (O'Connor 505). Moreover, instances of the grandmother claiming that if The Misfit pray, Jesus will guide him, while she herself never does it and simply goes on to say in a cursing manner, "Jesus, Jesus" (O'Connor 507) insinuating The Misfit needs the saving. O'Connor cleverly implies this as the grandmother being sympathizing with his past, all the while her tone is almost becoming forcing, as a means of psychological attack.
This causes the readers to realize she has had a “moment of grace” in her life. She says to him, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children” (O’ Conner 413). The Grandmother has a moment in which she sees the Misfit as a regular human being who is only a bad person because he has gone through a lot of pain and suffering. As soon as the Grandmother touches the Misfit he is shocked by her actions and her words to the point to where he shoots her three times in the chest.
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.
The character of the Misfit is talked about multiple times in the story before the Misfit actually appears. The grandmother reads from the local paper that the criminal, the Misfit, is loose from federal prison (O’ Connor). I find this ironic because the grandmother and her family are found by the Misfit after they put their car in the ditch. The Misfit says to the grandmother, “I ain’t a good man, but I ain’t the worst in the world neither. I been in the arm service, both land and sea, and been twict married.”
“…the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (145). Because of her, the whole family died, she brought the cat causing the wreck, and she made him go down a road leading to god knows where. The Misfit is also a bizarre character with his willingness to kill attitude and the lack of remorse for doing it. “… he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.”(152). He doesn’t even think of what he has done as being wrong, he just goes about his business.
In the story, Joyce Carol Oates introduces the main character, Connie, by giving the reader contextual information on her life. Connie was the typical rebel teenager. She lied to her parents, snuck off with the boys, went out late at night, was mischievous, and had a dysfunctional relationship with her family. The story motivated the production of the film, “Smooth Talk”. Both of these pieces had the same crucial ideas, varied in the family relations, information concerning Arnold Friend and his obsession of Connie, and resolutions to the ambiguous ending.
Now she throws this term out there in an attempt to save her own life which it does not. The grandmother is very narcissistic. When she is shot the Misfit says “She would have been a good woman, if it had been some-body there to shoot her every minute of her life.” (O’Connor,
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
can be cause for the reader 's strongest moment of caring with the grandmother. His other main role in the story is to be the irresponsible son, the grandmother anger is constantly trying to avoid through careful manipulation. Grandmother makes odd decisions (brings the cat, dresses nice for a car accident).She believes she can out talk The Misfit and convince him not to kill her. Also, she doesn’t plead for anyone else’s life (selfish).She could’ve been good if she had a gun to her at all times (Misfit quote). The first thing that I learn about her is that she doesn 't want to go to Florida because she 's got relatives to see in Tennessee.
An urban legend, as defined by the Merriam –Webster dictionary, is an often a lurid story that is based on hearsay and widely circulated as true. According to Nicholas DiFonzo, a renowned author and psychology professor, urban legends are “narratives about strange, funny, or horrible events that could have happened, the details of which change to fit particular locales and time periods, and which frequently contain a moral lesson.” The stories are entertaining, include cultural references, and convey people’s anxieties about certain topics. While some consider urban legends as myths with a possibility of truth in it, these tales evolve to suit the common themes of the time.
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.
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
(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.
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?"