Hard To Find Grandmother

Flannery O'Connor's “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a short story told in the third person. In the short story, a group of escaped convicts, led by a notorious leader called the Misfit murder a family because of a series of mishaps on the part of the Grandmother. The story centers singularly on the Grandmother; she is the character we were told most about. The Grandmother complains that she would rather go to Tennessee than Florida for vacation and she insists that her son, Bailey, take a detour that leads them to their deaths. She secretly brought her cat along which led her son to drive the car off the road when the cat leaped to his shoulders. Finally, she blurts out the identity of the murderer so that he has no choice but to murder …show more content…
She is self-centered, lies to her grandchildren, manipulates her son, and harps constantly about the inadequacy of the present and the superiority of the past. Also, when the grandmother encountered The Misfit, she says “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you are common blood. I know you must come from nice people!”(O’Connor 1292). This quote obliviously shows her manipulative side we have known from the beginning of the story. The grandmother is trying to make the Misfit think that he does not need to kill her because she believes he is a good man. She then implicates what she said earlier when she later says “...Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I’ll give you all the money I’ve got!”(O’Connor 1295). This quote makes it barefaced that she does not even think the Misfit is a good man. She is saying that because she is only trying to save and life and is willing to bribe the man she says is “good” to do so. She is particularly selfish in the sense that she doesn't even beg for anyone else's life but hers. The first words that came out of her mouth, after she's recognized The Misfit, are "You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" (O’Connor 1292) She keeps up this routine even as the rest of her family is taken to the woods and killed. Yet, when she reaches out to touch the Misfit , a "moment of grace" according to Christian theology – a special kind of gift from God, God suddenly fills her with …show more content…
At the end, 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 1296). This is an odd line, but it makes sense when one thinks about what it means. The Misfit's use of the word “good” illustrates that, like all of us, he instinctively knows about good and evil and his comment applies to everyone irrespective of gender. In other words, who would not be well behaved if there were always a loaded gun pointed at them? The threat of imminent death may be the only way some people will ever understand the deep-seated reason for being good. The Misfit seems to understand that her grace required the occurrence of an extreme situation. The grandmother was redeemed by confronting evil in the Misfit, and finding the ability within herself to pity him. However, The Misfit's response shows that he recognizes her act as goodness, even though he recoiled from it. It is also important to know that in his last line he goes from claiming that the only pleasure in life is "meanness" (O’Connor 1295), to stating that "It's no real pleasure in life." (O’Connor 1296). In other words, killing the grandmother gave him no pleasure. Consequently, killing has ceased to bring him happiness. Instead it troubles him. In that way, grace has worked on him too, and one might see the beginnings of a deep transformation into a good