Since being a lady is a big part of what the grandmother considers moral, the Misfit obviously doesn’t abide by the same moral code of ethics as she does. She desperately calls him a good man, as though appealing to some value deep within that he couldn’t deny. Her definition of “good” is skewed though, resting on her belief that the Misfit isn’t like most people. The grandmother’s application of the label “good” shows that it does not mean “kind” or “moral”. “Good” simply means whatever ideals align with hers.
In Flannery O’Connor’s story A Good Man Is Hard to Find, The Misfit is one of these dark and sinister characters that seems to act without a moral compass, leaving us to ask, Why? The Misfit seemed to have a wonderful childhood and a family that loved him as stated paragraph 89. “Yes mam,” he said, “finest people in the world.”... ”God never made a fine woman than my mother and my daddy’s heart was pure gold,” he said (O’Connor).
Was the Misfit really such a bad guy? In the short story a Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor he is given a bad reputation. He is a felon convicted of murder and escaping prison. However, as he is introduced towards the end of the story he is not portrayed as a macho mean killing machine. He is described as some old looking guy with spectacles, no shirt and tight pants.
Also, in this story did you get the strong feeling that the misfit may have actually been the grandmother’s son? One that she turned away from years prior. This story line leads this direction and her selfish ways may have been the reason he felt the need to kill her in the end. Realizing she was his mother and still selfish enough to not care about anyone else’s
This notion of redemption is primarily seen with the Misfit and his character development away from the pleasure of a murderer. Had it not been for the collision of the Grandmother and his paths, redemption would have been unlikely, even unachievable, for him. O’Connor intended for this story to have a positive ending, despite the death toll that is present at the end of the story. With her Catholic beliefs, the small act of the Grandmother’s compassion and the Misfit’s questioning of his morals are rather impactful to each of their redemptions. Perhaps O’Connor’s religious views could be insightful to religious scholars on the question of whether human nature is
It is by chance that the family encounters the Misfit and his group on the road. In the text it states, “‘I never was a bad boy that I remember of,’ The Misfit said in an almost dreamy voice, ‘but somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary’” (O’Connor 11). One can see that the Misfit believed that he was once a good person, but he succumbed to his inner darkness. In addition, a conversation in the text declares, “‘If you would pray,’ the old lady said, ‘Jesus would help you.’.....
The family stops for lunch at “The Tower and meets a character called Red Sammie Butts. This is where the grandmother strikes up a conversation with him. They talk about how it was back in the olden days when there were good people and Red Sammy states, “A good man is hard to find,” (Lawrence 410). The Misfit is the second major character in the story after the grandmother. The Misfit is an escaped criminal who comes in contact with the grandmother and her family when they get into an accident on the road.
While Autumn and Mathew are identified as misfits because they are feared, Sydney and Lyle are identified as so because of the family they are born into. Sydney becomes an outcast once his father is accused of burning down Leo McVicer's mill. After that he becomes "trapped in his own father's fortune" (Richards, 13) meaning that there is nothing to do to make people not see him as the mad son of the bad father. Lyle's fortune also becomes linked to it becomes he is a victim of the "Henderson horror" (Richards, 17) as well. Lyle says: "we were such outcasts" (Richards, 199) and that is because his father is an "outcast" so he is automatically one as well.
The Misfit and Arnold Friend both provide to be effective authoritative predators in persuading their victims to follow their directives which ultimately lead to their unfortunate deaths and abduction. Both characters in each of these short stories also exhibited insinuated religious implications that related them mainly to two major figures in religion, Jesus and the Devil. After analyzing The Misfit and Arnold's relationship with their respective main characters, many differences were also noted that separated them as individual manipulators that each performed their own tasks to get what they
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
Moreover, when the Misfit and the two men shoot the whole family in the woods, it illustrates the sinister and cruel world that needs saving. The violent car crash that causes the family to encounter the Misfit in the first place adds to the violent display that O’Connor creates of the world. O’Connor uses the violence in the story to shock the readers into self-awareness (Larson 1). She uses this self-awareness to bring to light the religious theme of redemption and grace for the corrupted. O’Connor’s
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?"
The Misfit is seen as being a part of reality and only believing what he sees with physical evidence. He also stays true to his morals of what he believes is right and wrong, especially when it comes to showing the equality of no mercy among the family members. Both characters reveal their use of Jesus, the spiritual battle that inhibits them and their concepts of reality. All of this gives insight to how there are no good or bad characters at the finale of this story. The battle of morality between the two characters only shows the
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.
