"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

Often, after aging, people are prone to reflect over their lives and, despite the mistakes they made, attempt to hold onto the past. Similarly, they may try to hide from the fact that they made poor choices or were at fault over an issue or action. In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the character of Grandmother displays these characteristics, as is seen through her relationship with her children and grandchildren, her endeavors to reminisce about the past with Red Sammy, and her futile attempt to talk the Misfit out of terminating her less than satisfactory life.

O’Connor’s Grandmother, described by Stephen Bandy as “a harmless busybody, utterly self-absorbed but also amusing,” may be viewed in many ways as a failure as a parent and role model (Bandy). Some would argue that “family relationships inhibit growth and contribute to the protagonist’s insecurity; the individual parent/child pair is alienated from the community" (Paulson 46). This phenomenon is clearly perceptible via the character of Grandmother. While
currently living with her son Bailey, it is implied that she has several other children, to whom she is estranged. Throughout the story, Bailey shows a prodigious lack of respect for his mother, while in return she undermines and manipulates him, becoming “the catalyst for the action in the story” (Grimshaw 72). When Grandmother tries to bring along her cat in fear that he would kill himself if left unattended, Bailey flatly refuses simply because he “didn’t like to arrive at a motel with a cat” (O’Connor 445). As a result, Grandmother hides the cat in her valise, and he ultimately becomes the reason for the accident when he suddenly pushes free from the luggage and jumps into Bailey’s unsuspecting face.

Grandmother’s manipulative ways are also seen when she lies to the children about secret tunnels into a house from her past that she want to see in an attempt to have Bailey sidetrack and go see it. As the story progresses, it becomes more and more evident that, perhaps as an effect of raising Bailey poorly, her grandchildren are not being trained properly and similarly lack respect for their elders. Initially, they treat her as a burden, wishing that she would remain at home rather than vacationing with them but declaring that she would not, even for “a million bucks” (O’Connor 445). During the car ride, they are singularly rude, bickering with each other without any thought for the annoyance that it undoubtedly causes her. It appears that Grandmother ignores these obvious instances of disrespect in an effort to ignore her own parenting mistakes, and to manipulate her family for the benefit of her own conscience and personal happiness.

Endeavoring to hold on to the past, which she considers to be the better days, Grandmother reminisces with Red Sammy at his roadside restaurant about the differences between the present evil and the past good. Paulson believes that, many of O’Connor’s characters “struggle for a sense of significance in a scientific/ industrial world that undermines the human capacity for meaningful relationships and defines humanity not in terms of spirituality but as animals, or worse, machines” (Paulson ix). Grandmother and Red Sammy are two excellent examples of this statement as they are engage in a battle with the present scientific/industrial way of life, as they firmly believe that it has impaired the way of life that they have always known, where humans were able to trust other human beings in their relations and interactions with one another. The two mention benefits from the past such as “leaving your screen door unlatched” when you step out for awhile, while decrying the present generation as unscrupulous to the point where one cannot trust “a soul in this green world of God’s” (O’Connor 448).
They also converse about the Misfit, a criminal who has escaped from a maximum security prison and is in their area, and are adamantly fearful of an attack or robbery because of the changing times. Ironically, when Grandmother is about to die later, she continually tells the Misfit that he is truly a good man, despite having discussed earlier the dishonorable and duplicitous nature of people with Red Sammy. While striving to uphold the past and its memory, Grandmother fails to analyze the negative impacts that the past has had on the present.

After reading the conclusion of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” it undoubtedly comes to the reader at no surprise that “almost half of O’Connor’s published stories end with a shocking death” (Paulson x). As she seeks to preserve her own life at the scene of the accident, Grandmother has a superfluity of flatteries and positive encouragements for the Misfit. She continually tells him that he is “a good man at heart” (O’Connor 451). As denoted by Paulson concerning Grandmother’s true intent however, “immersed in the stream rather than contemplating the end of life, the grandmother judges a ‘good’ man according to superficial first impressions and materialistic values” (Paulson 90).
As she becomes more fearful, she begins to compare him with her own son, suddenly realizing that Bailey could easily have grown up to be the Misfit. Interestingly enough, her attempts at appeasing the Misfit work for a time as, while sending the other family members into the woods to be shot, he allows her to remain for a time and proceeds to tell her his pitiably pathetic life story.

As she begins to pray, interceding for her life, the Misfit scoffs at Jesus and both His own and Lazarus’ resurrection from the dead. As they discourse, Grandmother believes that she is finally hitting an internal nerve of his conscience and as she reaches out to touch him physically, his trance is broken and, returning to himself, the Misfit shoots Grandmother three times. During their discussion, “the grandmother is granted a moment of illumination during which she realizes the emptiness of her faith and extends to the man who is about to kill her true love of Jesus” (Renner). One furthermore is led to feel as though Grandmother and her poor parenting are responsible for the Misfit, but it “does not imply that we are expected to excuse the Misfit's crimes or that they are really the grandmother's fault” (Renner).

According to James A. Grimshaw, “O’Connor sees the Grace working in the Misfit, too; and although the Grandmother loses her life, she has gained that inward moment which may be offered at any time but is not always accepted” (5). As Grandmother approaches her death, it appears that she begins to more accurately consider the past in relation to the future and, realizing the flaws and mistakes throughout her life and desiring to live longer in order to make things right, she clings to whatever she can in an attempt to save herself. Likewise, the Misfit purports to show mercy on her by sharing his doleful tale of injustice, during which time it becomes visible that he is a “foil to the Grandmother’s hypocrisy and illuminate{s} her character as a lady” (Grimshaw 39). Grandmother probably came the closest of anyone to breaking down his defenses, and even he recognized that in the face of death she finally comprehended her flaws and became a good person. One sees that “this sympathy {for the Misfit} is a positive value, even though her gesture of love is brutally rejected” (Paulson 87).

O’Connor’s work “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” displays the “unsettling tension inherent in an unresolvable paradox” that is so typical of her writing (Zornado). As is clearly visible from her relationship with her family, reminiscing with Red Sammy, and desperate discussion with the Misfit, Grandmother had a serious problem with properly connecting the past and the present. The segment of her life depicted in O’Connor’s story shows a woman immovably fixed in the past trying to hide from the present in an effort to disguise her failures and shortcomings. Only when faced with death did she come to realize her flaws and wish to turn around a life full of irreparable mistakes. As the Misfit said, “She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life”(O’Connor 455).




Works Cited
Bandy, Stephen C. ""One of My Babies: the Misfit and the Grandmother"" Short Story Criticism (1996): 107-118. Literature Resource Center. Emma Waters Summar Library, Jackson, TN. 13 July. Keyword: A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

Drake, Robert. Flanner O'Connor: a Critical Essay. Williams B. Eerdmans Co., 1996. 6-44.
Grimshaw, Jr, James A. The Flannery O'Connor Companion. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood P, 1981. 5-72.

O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man is Hard to Find." The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Comp. Michael Meyer. Boston: University of Connecticut, 2008. 445-455.
Paulson, Suzanne M. FLANNERY O'CONNOR: a Study of the Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne, 1998. ix-196.

Renner, Stanley. ""Secular Meanings in "a Good Man is Hard to Find"" Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (1982): 123-132. Literature Resource Center. Emma Waters Summar Library. 13 July 2008. Keyword: A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

Shaw, Mary N. ""Responses to God's Grace: Varying Degrees of Doubt in Flannery O'Connor's Character Types." CLA Journal (2001): 471-479. Literature Resource Center. Emma Waters Summar Library, Jackson, TN. 13 July 2008. Keyword: A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

Zornado, Joseph. "A Becoming Habit: Flannery O'Connor's Fiction of Unknowing." Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (1997). Literature Resource Center. Emma Waters Summar Library, Jackson, TN. Keyword: A Good Man Is Hard to Find.