A Good Man Is Hard to Find

A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” shows how in the face of tragedy one’s perspective and even morals can change in an instant. O’Connor addresses a number of problematic issues and ideas, mostly through her devout Catholic faith. In this story we find that that the characters have been exposed to shocking violence as a means of achieving an ultimate and meaningful moment. No one is free of sin and as a result we all fall short of the glory of God and are in need of redemption.

This story commences as a simple family drama, with a deceitful and self centered grandmother who causes the death of her family. Her deceitful ways, exemplified in the action of bringing her cat along and hiding him in the car, do not coincide however with the Christian image that the grandmother seems to have of herself. “For her, religion is “an easily acquired” part of her respectability” (Richard Evans, 184). We also see throughout the story that the grandmother is selfish. When she says, “You’re the Misfit!” she does so without regard for her family (O’Connor 415) and sealing their fate. The grandmother engages the Misfit in useless conversation trying to save her life. She tries dealing with the Misfit by appealing to his gentility. She is insistent that he is a good man from good people, “You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!” (O'onnor, 416). Not once does she plea for the life of her family. The grandmother shows us again that she is only thinking of herself when she says, “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” (O’Connor 416). During times of crisis, one would expect unity; however, this is not the case with this family.

The Misfit, whose “…name ironically connects him to the world of popular psychology and text book sociology in which he is merely a deviant from society’s norms,” (Evans, 182) sees himself as being trapped in a life that is like a narrow room with walls right and left. The grandmother’s manners are selfish, superficial, and condescending. For the Misfit everything has a rational explanation. The Misfit’s dialect indicates that he is from a lower socioeconomic class compared to the family. The misfit, however, belongs neither with the complacent nor with the believers. “The Misfit misunderstands faith; thinks that seeing is believing,” (Evans, 186). He does not know how the world is organized at a spiritual level, and says, “Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead…and He shouldn’t have done it” (O’Connor, 419). The Misfit is alienated from his spirituality by his realistic ideals. For the Misfit Jesus, “thrown everything off balance, “(O’Connor, 419) because he stood for injustice and responded to these injustices with mercy. Being that the act of mercy shown by Jesus was his death; the Misfit has his own revenge on Christ’s mercy by killing his children.

The interaction between the grandmother and the Misfit