Character Analysis “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”

The grandmother is the central character in the story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find’, by Flannery O’Connor. The dysfunctional family is planning a trip to Florida, Bailey his wife, the baby, two children (boy and girl) the grandmother and a stowaway cat. Upon reading about the Misfit escaping from Federal Pen and are in Florida the grandmother tried to change their destination. The grandmother is a manipulative, deceitful, and self-serving woman who lives in the past era of the south. She has the same prejudice attitudes of that time. The grandmother’s untruthfulness while on the trip will cause certain doom for the family and her Christian faith would be put to the test. The grandmother tries desperately to change her family's vacation destination as she tries to manipulate her son into going to Tennessee instead of Florida. Her reasons for wanting to go Tennessee were to make connections with some of her peers. The grandmother was also concerned about the children seeing Tennessee since they had already been to Florida. “The children have been to Florida before,” the old lady said. ”You all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad. They never have been east to Tennessee”. The children made comments to the grandmother “If you don’t want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay home?” The grandmother asked what you would do if the Misfit caught you. “I’d smack his face,” said the boy. The grandmother is about to do a deceitful thing. She knew her son didn’t want to take a cat to a motel. So the grandmother’s only thought was to bring the cat on the trip and hid it from the others. The logic behind her actions is that three days is too long to leave the cat and he would miss her. She was also afraid that the cat would asphyxiate himself if he brushed against a gas burner. The old lady with a cat in tow settled down comfortable for the trip. The grandmother was dressed in her blue dress, hat with violets and white gloves. “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady”. The grandmother fits the picture of an older southern lady who is prejudice especially when referring to the African-American race, she said, "Oh look at the cute little picka-ninny!" He doesn’t have on any pants replied one of the children “He probably didn’t have any,” the grandmother stated. “Little niggers in the country don’t have things like we do”. This was the grandmother’s way of defining her social status of being elite. She reminisced of how she could have married Mr. Teagarden; a successful and wealthy businessman. But through her vanity she couldn’t see herself marrying a man who only brought her watermelons every Saturday. That was a good man. The family stopped to get some food at the Tower. She enjoys listening to old songs like "The Tennessee Waltz." At the Tower she has an in depth conversation with Sammy Red the owner one question to him was did you read about the criminal, The Misfit. “A good man is hard to find,” Red Sammy said. “Every-thing is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more.” The good old days reminds her of the things she believes are more important, even more so than her own family. The grandmother faults other people for the adverse events that she has experienced throughout her entire life. The grandmother remains self-serving throughout the story. Her reasons for not wanting to go to Florida are purely selfish, even though she pretends that it is to ensure the children's safety. She decides that she would like to visit an old plantation and begins her pursuit of convincing Bailey to agree to it. She describes the old house for the children adding mysterious details to intrigue their curiosity. "There was a secret panel in this house," she states cunningly knowing it is a lie. The children starting nagging their dad and became demanding because they too wanted to see the old house. On the drive to the old house the grandmother soon realized she had made a major mistake the old house isn’t in Georgia but Tennessee. She was so embarrassed her body jerked and hit the basket containing the cat. The cat leaped out onto Bailey’s shoulder and caused a major accident. The car accident was in the direct path of who the grandmother had feared from the beginning of their vacation, the Misfit. “The grandmother had the peculiar felling that the bespectacled man was someone she knew. His face was as familiar to her as if she had known him all her life but she could not recall who he was”. Recognition was soon clear in head, “You’re The Misfit.” “Yes’m,” the man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be known, “ but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me.” Bailey said some derogatory comments and insulting language to his mother and shocked all of them. She started crying. “Lady,” the Misfit said, “don’t you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don’t mean. I don’t reckon he meant to talk to you thataway.” “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you?” the grandmother said. The grandmother’s conversation to the Misfit was her plea for self-preservation, “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have com-mon blood. I know you must come from nice people!” The Misfit told the old lady he come from some of the “finest people in the world.” He went on to explain to her “God never made a finer woman than my mother and my daddy’s heart was pure gold“. The grandmother is set on manipulating the Misfit and said, “You shouldn’t call yourself The Misfit because I know you’re a good man at heart. I can just look at you tell. The Misfit took heart to the fact the old lady seen him as a good man. The Misfit had one of the two boy’s take Bailey and his son off toward the woods with him. “Come back this instant!” his mother was crying out to her son in a voice of despair. She found herself looking at the Misfit, “I just know you’re a good man,” she said desperately. “You’re not a bit common!” The Misfit said “Nome, I ain’t a good man”, “but I ain’t the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters”. The grandmother said to the Misfit what about prayer? “Do you ever pray?” The Misfit had no connection to a source of a higher spiritual being. Two pistol shot echoed from the woods and the grandmother called out Bailey Boy, she knew their lives were over. “Pray, pray” the grandmother began, pray, pray….” The mother, the baby and daughter were lead off toward the woods. Alone with the Misfit thee grandmother had lost her ability to connect with the higher source and nothing came from her inner voice. Finally she was calling on “Jesus. Jesus,” he will help you and me. According to her notions a respectable lady should believe in a merciful God. But her faith doesn’t seem to run very deep. She probably can’t understand how God could let something like this happen to her, a good woman. Is that why she cries “Jesus, Jesus”?. This was her plea for the Misfit to pray. A shot rang out from the woods. “Jesus!” the old lady cried. “You’ve got good blood! I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady! I’ll give you all the money I’ve got!” Two more shots rang from the woods. The grandmother crying called out to Bailey, as a plea for forgiveness for all of her mistakes in life. The grandmother mind was in a fog about what she was hearing from the Misfit about Jesus. The grandmother trying to connect with the Misfit in an effort to save her own life whispered, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children.” The grandmother doesn’t seem to be the kind of person to give love to a murderer. Was this the grandmother’s final attempt to manipulate the Misfit? She reached out and touched him, he shoot her three times. “She would have been a good woman,” The Misfit said “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life”. How deceitful of the grandmother to think if she could plea to a murderer he would let her go. The story of “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” is a breath taking story of how a family is destroyed. The grandmother’s manipulative, deceitful and self-serving ways makes you think about the possibility of a dramatic transformation in a person. The grandmother having just lost all of her family and in danger of death herself she appears to undergo a sudden and miraculous change. She felt love momentarily even for the person who killed her family. She believed she is a true Christian person that had her faith put to the test by the Misfit.