Grandmother And The Misfit example essay topic

"A Good Man Is Hard To Find" Flannery O'Connor's " A Good Man Is Hard To Find" depicts a family's encounter with a criminal escaped from a federal penitentiary and their essential relinquishment of life. The family that the story surrounds has planned a trip to Florida for a family vacation. Knowing but unconcerned about the criminal at large, also known as the Misfit, the family voyages onward towards their destination until the trip is abruptly stopped by a totally unnecessary exploration down an unkempt, hilly and dangerous road. The dangerous road combined with the unsuspecting attack of the driver from the grand mothers cat, Pitty Sing, lands the family in a ten-foot deep ditch and in need of help. The family frantically waves down the first car to pass and little do they know that the help that they were hoping to get will lead to an encounter with the Misfit and ultimately to their demise. O'Connor's uses contrasting elements of literature to make the story "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" mysterious yet predictable, and undeveloped yet totally defined.

Her use of third person unknowing keeps the reader wondering but her use of foreshadowing gives the reader insight to what may occur next. The use of these two elements together keeps the reader predicting, therefore leading to an involvement with the reader and the story. The narrator lets the reader know that a criminal is on the loose, "Here this fellow calls himself The Misfit is a loose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people" (302). The next sentence reads", I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that a loose in it.

I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did" (303) which foreshadows what is to come later in the story. O'Connor also leaves many of the characters in the story very undefined except for the main two, The old woman, or the grandmother and the Misfit. O'Connor spent more time depicting the grandmothers outfit in the beginning of the story than she did with all of the undefined characters in the whole story combined, which gave insight to the way the grandmother was, the way she viewed herself and the way her family viewed her; an old, prude, egotistical woman. She did care for her family, but her intentions at heart were only for herself. The misfits image is somewhat concealed, although O'Connor does talk about the looks of the Misfit, the gloominess surrounding the character overshadows his looks and the Misfit seems to be a character standing in the direct sunlight, no color, just the shadow of something evil. The undefined characters of the story only seem to help accelerate the action of the story.

The plot of " A Good Man Is Hard To Find" really starts to take action when the family crashes their car and in waiting for help sees a car creeping around the bend, and here O'Connor does a good job setting the tone and image. "The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again, moving even slower, on top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black battered hearse-like automobile. There were three men in it". (308) When O'Connor describes the vehicle as black and hearse-like you can tell instantly that the family is in trouble and the Misfit is about to be met. In the eyes of the narrator the family does not know their in trouble until the men exiting the car show they have guns and the grandmother identifies one of the men as the Misfit.

Identifying the Misfit may have been the most crucial mistake the grandmother made the whole story, because due to her identifying the man she may have set her family up for death. The grandmother's son, Bailey, recognizes this and after the Misfit has been recognized and the story says", Bailey turned his head sharply and said something to his mother that shocked even the children. The old lady began to cry and the Misfit reddened". (309) From this point on the Misfit and his accomplices began killing the family.

Behind these killings the true meaning of the story exists. Three different sprees of killings take place, first the father and son, then the mother daughter and the baby, and lastly the grandmother. The family as a unit feels frozen, perhaps paralyzed from the shock of the crash leaving them unable to react towards the gunmen. The father seems ready to defend his family but freezes up before taking action, only to reveal him as frightened and weak. The woods off the dirt road on which they had crashed were described as, "the line of woods gaped like a dark open mouth". (309) These woods are where the killings take place, the family shot one by one.

"There was a pistol shot from the woods, followed closely by another. Then silence... She could hear the wind move through the tree tops like a long satisfied in suck of breath". (311) The trees and the woods are symbolic of life and death, the woods inhaled the members of the family alive, only to exhale them through the treetops in the form of spirits. Religious undertones are present through the climax of the story, and are especially noticeable as the grandmother pleads for her own life by attempting to restore the Misfits faith in god. The Misfit seems to have some issues with God.

He doesn't pray because he thinks Jesus threw the world off balance when he raised people from the dead. He doesn't believe that anyone was really raised from the dead and he wishes that he had been there so he could have seen for himself what really happened. Death is one of the few certain things in life. If someone can be raised from the dead, death becomes uncertain.

This is a scary realization to an unreligious person when the one thing you " re sure of, you " re not sure of anymore. The Misfit also says that if Jesus isn't whom he said, "the only pleasure in life is meanness" (313). Obviously, he doesn't believe in Jesus because of the sins he is committing. This is why the grandmother is having such a difficult time getting through to the misfit and why eventually she is shot down.

After all of the other attempts to get through to The Misfit, the Grandmother starts to see The Misfit from a Jesus-like perception. It is at that same moment, while looking into The Misfit's face, that the grandmother's head clears and states to him, 'Why you " re one of my babies' (313). The church teaches us that we are all God's children no matter what we do or say. It is from these teachings that The Grandmother comes to realize this life altering realization. Simultaneously, the grandmother recognizes briefly and dimly that she and The Misfit are bound together by the mystery of life and death.

The Misfit and grandmother are spiritually connected to each other by the blood and body of Christ that are said to be given in order to free one of sin. When the grandmother reaches out to touch The Misfit as like a hand of god the Misfit 'springs back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest' (313). Flannery O'Connor's background as a Christian influences the themes to her stories. In "A Good Man Is Hard To Come By" the relationship of God to his disciples, in this case to the grandmother is seen by his presence in her when she touches the Misfit. In the end the grandmother has gained redemption by coming to the acceptance of God and has in some way affected the Misfit.

Although he has not accepted God in any way, the Misfit seems to be thinking, "The Misfits eyes were red rimmed and pale and defenseless looking" (313), maybe contemplating what he thinks about himself and the worth of practicing religion.

Bibliography

O'Connor, Flannery M. "A Good Man Is Hard To Find". Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Heine, 2004.