Creation of Empathy in Flannery O’ Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” Through the usage of dramatic irony and person vs society conflict in the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’ Connor is able to elicit empathy in her story, adding a captivating new level of interpretation. “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” is about a myopic and manipulative grandmother who struggles to live in the present, because her mind is stuck in the past. To the grandmother’s great discontent, she and her family went on a road trip to Florida. In one situation, the grandchildren, John Wesley and June Star, offended the grandmother by talking negatively about Georgia and Tennessee. “If I were a little boy...I wouldn’t talk about my native state …show more content…
Around the climax of “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” we are introduced to a character that had been mentioned in many places previously in the story- the Misfit. When the Misfit has the grandmother separate from her family, we can see through indirect characterization what he has been through, and what he is struggling with. The Misfit is talking to the grandmother, and she begins to plead for her life, bringing up that the Misfit had to be a good man and that he should have faith in God. The Misfit’s responses were things such as, “‘I was a gospel singer for a while...I been most everything. Been in the arm service, both land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet…I was never a bad boy that I remember of,’” he said in a ‘dreamy voice.’ “‘...somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got sent to penitentiary. I was buried alive.” The Misfit doesn’t know what happened to his past life, something many people can emphasize with. Society made him a criminal, and he wonders why he can’t be happy and do as many things as he used to. He was blamed for killing his father, even though he didn’t. And now he feels trapped in a cage with nowhere to go. He