Misfit On The Other Hand example essay topic

806 words
The Character Analysis of The grandmother and The Misfit of Flannery O? Connor?'s? A Good Man is Hard to Find? The two major characters in Flannery O?

Connor's A Good Man is Hard to Find are in acualality are a backward, opposite image of each other. The grandmother is showed to be a selfish self-involved woman who wants her way, a person with little memory, just a basic old woman living with her only son. The Misfit on the other hand is a man who feels he has done no wrong, but has just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but in the end comes to close to the truth which scares him. From the beginning it introduces the grandmother and right off you see how she wishes they could take a trip to where she used to live, she tries every chance she gets to change the plans for the trip with her only son.?

Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida, ?? I wouldn? t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it.? As they drive and they talk everything she says toward someone else is always a put down, towards the people they see and the people in the car. She sees a little?

Niger? boy and comments? Little Niger's in the country don? t have things like we do? As they drove she talks Bailey, her son, to take a detour to see an old plantation she visited when she was younger, halfway there she realized the plantation was in Tennessee, and they were in Georgia. She keeps this knowledge to herself to keep herself out of trouble and being yelled at. As they continue down and endless road the cat springs free from the hiding place in which the grandmother placed it, which causes Bailey to loose control and wreck. While sitting on the side of the road a car with 3 men pulled over one the grandmother stupidly announces to everyone as The Misfit.

One by one each person is taken to the woods and shot while the grandmother tries to bargain her life with The Misfit. Suddenly with the threat of death near her door she suddenly tries to be something she is not. She sympathizes with him and tries to relate to him. All of this comes to no avail if anything in antagonizes him which throws a switch in his mind and he reacts the only way he knows how, by shooting her in the chest and putting his problem to an end. In acting like someone she was not and being selfish toward her self she brought her own death upon her. On the other hand, The Misfit, he believes he has done no wrong that the wrong has been done to him, that society was to blame, not him.

He thinks ever since his birth he has been on the down side and the put down, from his father to all of society, but he sees himself as no better than anyone else does. He is so kind to everyone even though he sends them one by one to their deaths. He believes he never did anything to deserve to be put into jail, that he was once again done wrong. With the grandma still trying to bargain and reach him see somehow reaches inside and hits a nerve, pulls a switch which surprises and amazes The Misfit, and he reacts on instinct by killing her and ending his problem.

These characters could not have been any more different, the grandmother a self indulging, self involved and caring person who looked out for number one, herself. She went through life to benefit herself and pretty much everything she did was for her own selfish self. The Misfit says dealing with the grandmother, ? She would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.? The Misfit on the other hand who holds himself as no better than anyone else. He was just a regular person who was wronged by a mistake, which sent him to a living hell.

He takes life as it comes, he doesn? t like what he has to do to the family, but it was that or go back to the place he was never supposed to be, so doing what he doesn? t really wish to he kills them. With only one reply to it all, ? It's no real pleasure in life. ?