A Good Man Is Hard To Find Literary Analysis

The story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor is about a family going on a vacation when it takes a turn for the worst. Bailey, his wife, two kids and the grandmother go on a road trip to Florida while an escaped convict, the Misfit, is on the loose. The family’s car crashes and coincidently the Misfit approaches the scene to “help” the family. After sending off the family members one by one to be shot by his accomplices, he kills the grandmother himself. The author, O’Connor, writes the story so that you end up hating the grandmother through her arrogant personality and racist remarks. The grandmother displays her arrogance throughout the whole story putting her own personal wants before everyone else. Along with her arrogance she is manipulative and is saying “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that on the loose” (O’Connor 299) referring to the misfit being loose in Florida. She is trying to convince bailey using guilt to take the family to Tennessee instead of Florida for her connections. Also stating “the children have been to Florida before… they have never been to east Tennessee” (O’Connor 299). She is refusing to stay …show more content…
As the family is driving through Georgia, the grandmother gives the children a lecture on what things were like when she was young and on having respect. Ironically, follows up with saying “oh look a cute little pickaninny!” (O’Connor 301) while driving past a boy. The racial slurs she uses shows that she was being sarcastic when pointing out the child. The child was standing in the doorway of a shack, as the grandmother says mockingly “wouldn’t that make a picture, now?” (O’Connor 301). The children ask why the boy wasn’t wearing pants and the grandmother says “he probably doesn’t have any” (O’Connor 301) in an insulting way. The grandmother’s hypocrisy may be a bad influence on the children, which causes them to behave how they