Misfit On The Other Hand example essay topic

Tanner Varner College Writing Character Comparison The grandmother and The Misfit of Flannery O' Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" are backward, opposite images of each other. However, the grandmother does have similarities with the character, Ruby Turpin in O'Connor's short story, "Revelation". The grandmother is portrayed as being 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 too close to the truth, which scares him. From the beginning, the author 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 a loose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida,"I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that a loose 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 "Nigger" boy and comments "Little Nigger's in the country don't have things like we do". As they drove she talks Bailey, her son, into taking 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 introduces him to everyone as The Misfit.

One by one each person is taken to the woods and shot while the grandmother tries to spare 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 it 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 again did wrong. With the grandma still trying to spare her life, she somehow reaches him emotionally inside and hits a nerve 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 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 holds himself as bring no better than anyone else. He thought 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".

The grandmother in O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" shares some common characteristics with the character, Ruby Turpin in Connor's "Revelation". Both characters are self-righteous. They are very selfish and always think of themselves first. They are also both very critical of others, always seeing the flaws in everybody around them. Both have a strong sense of their own superiority, morally, socially and religiously and both are made to wake up and face reality through a painful encounter..