Fiction Assignment In A Good Man is Hard to Find, O’Connor displays to us the theme of an unsympathetic character that is surprisingly touched when one of his victims of his senseless crimes tries to convert him and persuade him to not kill her. With O’Connor’s Catholic influenced writing, a closer look through the short story shows the theme of unlikely, undeserving characters finally understanding the error of their ways and knowing that they could change, through the help and belief of religion. At the end of the story we see irony along with a sort of justice to the killing of the grandmother, who led her family down on a trip to their death because she was insistent of reliving and glorifying the former times. We also see the Misfit find out that there is no pleasure in his way of life, which makes him reflect on how different his life could have been. The first example of the Grandmother’s ability to compare and contrast the present time she is in and the ways of the past is in the backseat of the car with her grandchildren. When her grandson says that he wishes to get through their home state, Georgia, quickly, the grandmother admonishes him by telling him that children were more respectful of their states and parents. This seems to have little effect on the two disrespectful children. Further along the vacation, the family goes to The Tower for lunch. The place is run by a man named Red Sammy, whom advertises his restaurant by appealing to people just like the grandmother with his veteran status and displaying the saying “Red Sam! The Fat Boy With The Happy Laugh!” (302) While eating there, the two discuss the ways of better times and Red Sam tells her the story that to him, is the perfect example of how dismaying the times have got. At the end of his recount of how he thought he was able to trust strangers by allowing them to charge gas but got ripped off instead, the grandmother exclaims that the reason why he did that was because he was a good man. Red Sam and the grandmother don’t seem to understand that trusting strangers wholly based on their appearance is foolish, regardless what the time period is. Wishing to see the plantation, so she can be reminded of her favorite times, the grandmother devises the lie of a silver filled secret panel in the house to recruit the children’s help of persuading her son to drive them there. On the way to the alleged location of the plantation, the grandmother realizes her mistake of the location and indirectly causes the car accident. She had planned for a car accident by remarking that she dressed like a lady for recognition of being a lady. Shortly after the accident, the other unsympathetic character shows up. Ironically it is the Misfit that the lady had warned of. The grandmother uselessly tries to appeal to him by saying he looks to be a good man from nice people. She is saying this to a runaway criminal with a gun in his hand. Obviously, she is trying to bring him around to being good but the Misfit is quick to see that she is just trying to save herself. Even though he is the criminal, O’Connor shows us that he can still see the error of other people’s ways but not understand his wrong actions and why he does them. After her family is disposed of, the grandmother tries to reason with the Misfit and convince him to pray and believe in Jesus. The Misfit tells her his dismal view on life and how he thinks Jesus threw off the balance of life. He tells her if Jesus did raise the dead then she should look forward to losing her life and following Jesus. He then says that if Jesus didn’t, then everyone should just enjoy their time by doing meanness, which is summed up by his phrase, “No pleasure but meanness.”(309) This dazes the old woman because she thinks that this man is committed to his ways and she sinks to the ground, dizzy and overwhelmed. She can’t seem to pray at all and starts to eat her words on Jesus and religion. The Misfit is overcome with anger at his not being able to know the truth and tells her that he would not be the way he was if he did know. The grandmother is encouraged by this display of humanity and touches him, to only get quickly shot by him, which is her justice for not even pleading for her family’s lives.
O’Connor has developed the theme of an unsympathetic character, the Misfit, by asking for our sympathies when he shows his true feelings about the ways he is living. I think that O’Connor chose to have the villain set an example for the grandmother by making her understand in her final moments that her superior self-perception of herself is wrong and that she is just as imperfect as the people around her. The grandmother, when she says, “You’re one of my own children!”, is finally realizing that the two of them are similar and understands that she was morally wrong in her life. (309)
The Misfit, after killing the grandmother, seems changed from his conversation with the grandmother. This could be because he is thrown off by the discussion about his father, his crimes that he committed, and religion. He says he doesn’t need help from religion but after he shoots the grandmother, he says, “It’s no pleasure in life.”(310) I think O’Connor wanted to show us that the Misfit, whose nickname is a metaphor for his unorthodox lifestyle, could finally see that he could change, possibly through religion if he really wanted to
The conversation between the two unsympathetic characters changed both of them. They both realized how wrong they had lived their lives from the help of each other. I think they came to these conclusions because of their banter over religion and how it is supposed to make a person good if they do believe in it. O’Connor wanted this point to come through because it is ironic to see a manipulative, selfish old lady living her whole life in that way to find out at the end that she just needed compassion and understanding to be considered “good”. In the Misfit’s case it is also ironic because he has killed recklessly and never really thought of how he could have been a “good” man. O’Connor probably titled the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” because everyone has their faults and sometimes they don’t realize these faults until it is too late or they are too invested in their current way of life, thus it is hard to find a perfectly “good” person, which the grandmother and the Misfit realize at the end of the story.

Works Cited
O’Connor, Flannery “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
The Norton Introduction to Literature, Shorter 10th Edition, 2010.