1. The grandmother represents the conventional social values such as that she considers herself a lady. For instance, she is dressed very elegantly for a road trip as mentioned on page 965, “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” She believes children should be respectful of their native states and parents. The religious values represented by her are that prayers and Jesus would help the sinner. These values are exposed in the course of the story in various situations. For example, the grandmother persuades her son not to go to Florida, and she feels that children should listen to their parents. She tries to convince the Misfit to pray so that he feels better. The Misfit means …show more content…
The philosophic position the Misfit unknowingly gives voice to in rationalizing his actions is that he is a victim of the circumstances happened to him. As mentioned on page 972, the Misfit says, “I never was a bad boy that I remember of.” The Misfit believes he was innocent and still had to serve time in a penitentiary. The atmosphere of the penitentiary was so traumatic that he lost his innocence and turned into a criminal. When the Misfit says that Jesus has thown everything off balance. He means that Jesus forgives the sinner thus the sinner does not feel guilty. Perhaps that is the case with misfit where he knows that he is guilty of his crimes but at the same time he thinks he is innocent. At the other instance where the Misfit uses the same statement, he means that if Jesus was the only one who raised the dead and this disrupts the balance. The Misfit’s view of reality is more honest because he accepts he is not a good man. On the other hand, the grandmother lives in past and refuses to accept the changes. The grandmother gives importance to the appearances whereas the misfit does not care about the appearance. Moreover, when the grandmother was at gunpoint, she tends to call an escaped convict a good man when she knows he is a dangerous
“A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor begins with the introduction of the grandmother. It can quickly be noted that this woman holds herself in high regard. Grandmother views herself as a prim and proper lady. However, she does not possess the qualities of a lady. She is dishonest, selfish, and hypocritical.
These limitations cause the grandmother to lose spiritual authority and instead bound her to the Misfit’s set of beliefs. Although construed, the Misfit holds spiritual superiority, not because of a greater abundance of grace but because of his
His use of the quote from (Matthew 22:36-40) help him accuse the humanity others hold, and how they could allow their ‘neighbor’ to go through such emotional pains and
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
Although it may seem like the grandmother is helping the family by trying to convince The Misfit that he is a good man, she is only doing it for “purely selfish reasons” (Mitchell). She has no reaction and is cold-hearted when her family members are murdered. Another reason why she is selfish is because of how she believes that she deserves special treatment because she is a “lady”. In the beginning of the story, O’Connor makes it a point to illustrate how lady-like the grandmother is dressed compared to the mother by stating that anyone who saw her “would know at once that she was a lady” (617). The grandmother wants to make it clear that she is a lady and has expectations to be treated like royalty solely because of her
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
In the story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor, there is no doubt the reader should consider the grandmother a villain. Throughout the story, it is easy to assume the grandmother would eventually lead the family to some sort of downfall. The grandmother has many traits that make her a villain, and through her judgemental nature, selfish acts, and inability to stop talking, she leads her family and herself to their death. Throughout the story it is obvious that the grandmother is very judgemental of people and seems to consider herself as better than everyone.
In his poem “Behind Grandma’s House,” Gary Soto details the life and daily routine of a somewhat masochistic ten year old boy as he kicks over trash cans, terrorizes cats, and drowns ant colonies with his own urine. In many ways the boy acts as any other boy his age would be expected to, but he tends to go further than most young boys with his actions and descriptions of how he feels. This extra violence and destructive tendency the narrator exhibits can lead the reader to believe that, rather than being a typical child, he strongly craves attention due to his circumstances, and he is willing to act out and act obscenely in order to receive that attention. Throughout the poem the narrator details all the things he does to prove how tough he is, many
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?"
In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” she uses writing skills such as symbolism and imagery to get across her different themes to the reader’s with plenty of room for self-interpretation. Though O’Connor’s work could be defined as cynical, she does an excellent job of writing in the third person with her uncomplicated structure of sentences leaving plenty of room for her character 's thoughts, feelings, and actions to get across the realism of our world. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a battle between a grandmother with a rather artificial sense of goodness, and a criminal who symbolizes evil. The grandmother treats goodness as having good manners, and coming from a family of higher class, but at the end of the story comes to
The Misfit claims he was convicted of a crime that was not committed and buried alive in prison for killing his father. Being made to suffer for a crime which was not committed does not seem fair to this character.. The Misfit quotes on page 509,” I never was a bad boy that I remember of...” The Misfit is not actually a bad person he may have been sexually abused in prison or experienced some form of domestic violence as a child. The story describes the character as a man, why then does he refer to himself as a boy?
As opposed to the Grandmothers constant change of morals to favor certain situations, the Misfit has morals that are set in stone and adhere to his past, present and future. As the two characters converse, religion sparks an interest in the Misfit because it is something he is interested in understanding but knowing it must not be true. He believes that he must see it with his own eyes to prove the existence. His concept of reality also relates himself to Jesus, so much so as to believe he is a realistic representation of Him. He goes on to tell that the only difference is between the crimes committed and the proof held against him.
The Grandmother is a well-dressed and a proper southern lady. She is also the center of action in the short story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find". The grandmother seems very suspicious at first, and thinks her son Bailey will be forever small and has to abide by her rules. In her eyes she is never been wrong but knows it all. When we become up-close and personal with the grandmother we see that she's this bad person, which she appears to be old-fashioned, manipulative, and self-serving as a whole.
The Story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O'Connor uses symbols to depict one main idea. Flannery O'Connor uses the same theme in almost all of his stories which is grace and redemption. Grace and redemption is something the grandmother is working towards throughout the entire story. In the beginning, she's very shallow and only cares about how others see her. However as the story continues and different actions take place, her overall beliefs begin to change as she receives grace and redemption.
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.