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Good People are Hard to Find

                                                              Good People are Hard to Find

                                                 Based on the story: A Good Man is Hard to Find 

                        Tip: if one happens to recognize an escaped criminal after they've had an accident with their family while heading on vacation, don't point out that the person helping them is the criminal. Doing so will likely lead to your untimely death. If only the Grandmother from Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" had heard this advice before going on vacation with her family to Florida. Perhaps if she did, she and her family wouldn't be dead. Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" follows a grandmother and her family as they leave to travel to Florida and through a series of events, end up in a ditch on the side of the road with an escaped criminal as their only help. Through numerous characters, O'Connor makes points of character and although the Misfit plays the 'bad guy' of the story, "the family also represents a bunch of misfits" (Bouchard 83) and the Grandmother is repeatedly shown as someone who isn't very good. By exploring the character of the Grandmother, Flannery O'Connor shows that not only is a good man hard to find, but simply a good person is hard to find.

                 Many old women are kind, sweet, and wise old ladies, but the grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is anything but. This elder, who was never given a name, has many flaws in her character that not only make her unlikeable, but also put her family in danger. The Grandmother loves to manipulate people. There are many times throughout the story where she attempts to manipulate the people around her so that she gets what she wants: "'I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did.'" (O'Connor 2). The Grandmother didn't want to go to Florida, so she found an article about an escaped criminal who was heading towards Florida in an attempt to dissuade her son from vacationing in the Sunshine State. Though her attempt was futile, she continues to manipulate. The Grandmother is also constantly concerned about herself. She worries over how she looks and how she can make it out of a given situation. When the family first starts their trip, the Grandmother has done herself up in gloves and lace and a "straw sailor hat" to assure that "In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady" (O'Connor 8). In addition, the Grandmother is very selfish. She exhibits her selfishness when she attempts to change the vacation location and, more significantly, when she lies so that she gets what she wants: "'There was a secret panel in this house,' she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were" (O'Connor 15-16). The Grandmother is a very flawed lady, but by all accounts, she is a "rather silly old woman [that's] selfish, vain and racially prejudiced" (Curley 30) who doesn't even see her flaws. In other words, she is "ignorant of her own ignorance" (Bouchard 83).

                The Grandmother's flaws are what propel the story toward its ending. Because she brought her cat along on the trip and selfishly lied to go see a house, the family gets into a car accident which allows the addition of new characters and interaction with the Misfit. Meeting and interacting with the Misfit brings out a new version of the Grandmother as well as it accentuates her flaws. After the Grandmother calls out the Misfit for being who he is, her entire manner changes. Where before she manipulated by lying or guilt tripping, now she manipulates using flattery and kind words. She uses her words as an attempt to appease the criminal and keep him from hurting her: "'you shouldn't call yourself The Misfit because I know you're a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell'" (O'Connor 24). She repeats similar sentences numerous times and continuously says he "'wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?'" (O'Connor 22). She pleads for her life without once mentioning her family, and when the Misfit brings them off into the woods, she hardly notices. Edwin Curley states that "she pleads for her life in terms which betray her superficiality" (30) meaning that the way she pleads shows how superficial and shallow the Grandmother is, even in a life or death situation. Besides the way she manipulates, the threat from the Misfit doesn't change the Grandmother at all. What it does do, is make her focus on herself even more than she did before. There's a moment when the Misfit dons the Grandmother's son's shirt and she "couldn't name what the shirt reminded her of" (O'Connor 28). The Grandmother was so focused on herself in the situation that she couldn't even recognize the shirt her son had been wearing moments before. While many people would've changed in the scary situation the Grandmother was in, she did not. She remained in her flaws and thought mainly of getting herself out alive.

                    While his buddies kill the Grandmother's family, the Misfit talks to the Grandmother. Their conversations serve as a "'mutual unmasking'" (Evans 181) of both the Misfit and the Grandmother. The Misfit speaks about his past that led him to this point in his life and in that he reveals a strong disdain for Christ and how he raised the dead. He blames the fact that he doesn't know for sure if Jesus raised the dead or not on his current position in life: "'if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now.'" (O'Connor 31). The Misfit can't believe in something he couldn't see and as a result he feels anger toward the subject. Robert Evans weighs in by saying "The Misfit misunderstands faith; thinks seeing is believing; and thereby forgets the fallibility Christ's disciples displayed" (Evans 186). The Misfit has done a lot in his life and because he's "been most everything" (O'Connor 27), he hasn't fit in with anything and this could have caused him to be angry and step away from faith. Now, after his journey through life, the Misfit finds that there's "'no pleasure but meanness'" (O'Connor 31) which is most likely why he acts the way he does and why he has no problem killing an innocent family. The Grandmother does little to dissuade the Misfit by simply telling him over and over to pray. Her insistence on prayer could show that the Grandmother may not have been an awful person, just a person with flaws who could have been a good woman if she had been "constantly aware of her own mortality" (Curley 31). Interacting with the Misfit may have opened the Grandmother's eyes to her mortality and caused her to turn to Christ, but despite the fear of death, she still didn't change how she acted, and she didn't make any effort to repent for her flaws in order for her to be redeemed. In no way did her interaction with the Misfit change the Grandmother and his interaction with her didn't change him.

                     Due to the way Flannery O'Connor writes the Grandmother, she shows that not only is a good man hard to find, but a good person in general is hard to find. The Grandmother has many flaws that put herself and her family in danger, which shows that even the 'good' people can be 'bad.' But she also shows how the Misfit is troubled due to doubt and how that affected his faith and life. Flannery O'Connor uses her characters in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" spectacularly to make a point about people and to show that a good man really is hard to find.

                                                                                Works Cited

Curley, Edwin. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, vol. 65, no. 3, 1991, pp. 29–45. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/s table/31301 41. 

Evans, Robert C. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Short Fiction: A Critical Companion, Jan. 1997, pp. 181–191. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh& AN= 24576510&site=lrc-plus. 

O'Connor, Flannery, and Jennifer Bouchard. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Introduction to Literary Context: American Short Fiction, Nov. 2014, pp. 81–86. EBSCOhost, search.ebs cohost. com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=101666179&site=lrc-plus.

O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man is Hard to Find." A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories. Boyd County Public Schools http://www.boyd.k12.ky.us/userfiles/447/Cla sses/28660/A%20Good%20Man%20Is%20Hard%20To%20Find.pdf. Accessed 19 June 2019.