Their Take On The Grandmother And Misfit example essay topic

A Good Man Is Hard to Fin This story was the first I read by O'Connor and probably my favorite to date. Every time I read it I catch myself laughing out loud at the grandmother who exemplifies southern women to a tee. The story begins with the typical nuclear family being challenged by the grandmother who doesn't want to take the vacation to Florida. She has read about a crazed killer by the name of the misfit who is on the run heading for Florida. Unfortunately, she is ignored by ever member of the family except for the little girl June Star who can read the grandmother like a book. The morning of the trip the grandmother is ironically dressed in her Sunday best and the first one in the car ready to travel as June Star predicted she would be.

Notice the grandmother's dress is very nice for a trip she was horrified to take only a day earlier. This is the first of O'Connor's attempts to knock the superficialness of southern culture. The grandmother was decked in white gloves and a navy blue dress with matching hat for the sole purpose of being recognized as a lady in case someone saw her dead on the highway. This logic may seem absurd to anyone who is foreign to southern culture, but I can assure you there are plenty of women who still subscribe to this way of thinking. The reader is now clued into the grandmother's shallow thoughts of death. In the grandmother's mind, her clothing preparations prevent any misgivings about her status as a lady.

But as the Misfit later points out,' there never was a body that gave the undertaker a tip. ' The grandmother's perceived readiness for death is a stark contrast to her behavior when she encounters the Misfit; for she shows herself to be the least prepared for death. As the trip progresses, the children reveal themselves as brats, although funny ones mainly out of O'Connor's desire to illustrate the lost respect for the family, and elders. The reader should notice when the family passes by a cotton field; five or six graves are revealed, perhaps foreshadowing what is later to come.

Some interesting dialogue takes place when John Wesley asks, "Where's the plantation', and the grandmother replies, "Gone With the Wind. ' This is perhaps another statement by O'Connor at the breakdown of the family and the subsequent absence of respect and reverence for the family unit illustrated by the two children. Around this time, June Star and her brother begin slapping each other and the grandmother keeps the peace by telling them a story of a black child mistakenly eating her watermelon with initials from a suitor carved in it reading E.A.T. Now here is where I think some of the reviewers are mistaken on the grandmother's character. They claim her story was racially motivated as well as her comment made about the "pickaninny' on the side of the road.

I have read reviews saying that the grandmother is a racist; but I think it is important to make the distinction between a racist and a Good-hearted ignorant white woman. In order for her comment to be racist, there must be some intent to denigrate blacks present-which there isn't. When O'Connor interpreted this story, she told of a teacher she ran into who determined that the grandmother was evil, but that his southern students resisted his interpretation. The teacher didn't understand why and O'Connor explained to him that the students resisted because, "they all had grandmothers or great-aunts just like her at home, and they knew, from personal experience, that the old lady lacked comprehension, but that she had a good heart the Southerner is usually tolerant of those weaknesses that proceed from ignorance.

The families encounter with Red Sammy Butt's serves as another outlet for O'Connor to express how trust and respect have begun to wear away. The reader should note the name of the town "Toombsboro' which the family passes through. It is then the grandmother makes the mistake of telling the child about a house with secret panels that is nearby. The children scream until Bailey concedes to visit the house. But the newspaper concealing the cat moves causing Pitty Sing to lurch on Bailey's shoulder resulting in the car being overturned. Just as everyone is getting their bearings, a car slowly approaches revealing three men.

When the men get out of their car, the grandmother recognizes the Misfit at once. Immediately he reveals himself to be polite and sociable and even apologizes to the grandmother for Bailey's rudeness to her. But he also doesn't waste any time as he asks one of his cronies to escort Bailey and John Wesley off into the woods to meet their fate. Now here is where the fun part begins. The grandmother and the Misfit engage in a conversation, which is supposed to convey a message, which I believe no one person besides O'Connor will ever fully understand. I will give it my best though.

At this point in the story, the reader should analyze what he knows of the grandmother's character thus far. She will prove to be no match for the Misfit's quick wits. After the grandmother tries to appeal to the Misfit by stating that he isn't a bit common, he goes into a story about his family and how he was the type of child to question everything. At every plead by the grandmother, he talks about different periods of his criminal life. Nothing she has said up until this point has affected him. The Misfit's terse responses to the grandmother's prayer advice reveal that these two individuals are on two very different levels with concern to religion.

The Misfit has a much deeper understanding of religion and his belief system than does the grandmother. O'Connor likens him to a prophet gone wrong. I prefer to liken him to the character of Kurtz in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness. ' Both of the men have the potential for greatness but as the result of seeing mankind at their worse, they have become jaded to individual suffering.

As the two continue in conversation, the Misfit asks the grandmother if it seems right that Jesus was punished and he has escaped punishment. The grandmother responds in the only way she knows how to by clinging to her superficial beliefs about "good blood' and behaving as a gentleman would. She has a limited understanding of religion and cannot even begin to connect with the Misfit who by now has gone off on a tirade about how Jesus' raising of the dead threw the world off balance. But then the grandmother observes the Misfit as he was about to cry.

She reaches out to him and remarks, "Why you " re one of my babies. You " re one of my own children. ' The Misfit, who is obviously affected, rears back and shoot her three times. I think O'Connor explains it the best when she writes,' The Grandmother is at last alone, facing the Misfit.

Her head clears for an instant and she realizes, even in her limited way, that she is responsible for the man before her and joined to him by ties of kinship which have her roots deep in the mystery she has been merely prattling about so far. And at this point, she does the right thing, makes the right gesture Over the past year many people have sent me their take on the Grandmother and Misfit. Here are two of what I consider to be the best. Ruben de Tal writes: I thought the conversation at the end had at its core the primary discussion of animal vs. metaphysical human nature. In other words, when the Misfit says of Jesus, "I wasn't there so I can't say He didn't ' and "It ain't right I wasn't there because if I had of been there I would of known if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now ' he is in effect expressing the basic plight of human awareness: while we are conscious and aware of ourselves, we are also basically animals with violent and primal drives at our cores, so part of that awareness demands so rise above the animal. However we derive this, it must give us some sense of value beyond the physical constraints of our bodies and world; otherwise, as the Misfit puts it", ' it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can– by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him.

No pleasure but meanness,' he said and his voice had become almost a snarl. ' However, the problem is that since no one has definite physical evidence of anything beyond what we see around us (note the Misfit's observations: "? ain? t a cloud in the sky,' he remarked, looking up at it. ' Don't see no sun but don't see no cloud neither ' ' and", ' Turn to the right, it was a wall,' The Misfit said, looking up again at the cloudless sky. ' Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was a floor ' '), any belief in our metaphysical value as human beings– in the value of human life– must therefore be just that: a belief, and nothing more. Even the grandmother feels it: "Alone with The Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice.

There was not a cloud in the sky or any sun. There was nothing around her but woods. She wanted to tell him that he must pray. She opened and closed her mouth several times before anything came out. Finally she found herself saying, ' Jesus, Jesus,' meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing. ' It is a leap of faith we must take, however we want to word it, whatever religious or spiritual (or anti-religious, anti-spiritual) ideology we wish to use.

And ultimately, what the Misfit sees (and eventually the grandmother as well) is that when we live in a world where the religious and spiritual dogma of yesterday are no match for the scientific, coldly observation-based and amoral context of the modern world, and when there are no other adequate answers to this question of how to place higher metaphysical value on human life, we are left with nothing but what we can see around us, and we have no means with which to answer the animal violence of someone like the Misfit. His frustration in not being there to see whether or not Jesus really did personify the metaphysical is the deep frustration and sense of loss that the modern world feels in not having Proof, in not having something adequate with which to approach these questions in the face of cold science and observation, and in being asked to perform the quaint, somewhat silly act of simply putting faith in something we cannot see with our own eyes. When the grandmother faces him for the last time and makes one final attempt to answer him, the futility of this is demonstrated starkly, coldly, and with all the animal violence and despair and nihilism inevitable in such a world: " ' I wasn't there so I can't say He didn't,' The Misfit said. ' I wish I had of been there,' he said, hitting the ground with his fist. ' It ain't right I wasn't there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady,' he said in a high voice, ' if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now.

' His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, ' Why you " re one of my babies. You " re one of my own children!' She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest.

' In the end, O'Connor is putting to us the same disturbing question the Misfit puts to the grandmother: how do we answer this nihilism in a way that makes sense within the context of the modern world? Judging by the state of affairs, I'd say we still have not come up with anything much better than the grandmother's pitiful response, and our society and world have the shotgun wounds to prove it As an agnostic (that's about as much as I'll commit to any sense of "religious' belief) I have struggled with this same question myself and have only come up with the idea that there are expedients– some more worthwhile and valuable than others (art, love, human interaction) – but that ultimately, there is no answer to O'Connor's question other than to persist in asking it. I think it comes down to the sense that as long as we keep asking the question, we maintain our value as humans because we not only exercise our uniquely human ability to question, but we also keep some kind of hope alive by simply implying that there is a question to ask and an answer to seek. When the Misfit describes himself in the following", ' My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. "You know,' Daddy said, "it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the letters.

He's going to be into everything!' ' He is making clear that there was a time when he WAS good– when he still did care enough to ask the questions that matter, that make us human. But somewhere along the way, something happened, and he lost that and became what he is today– not necessarily a good man, not necessarily a bad man– just an amoral man, and that is the worst kind of man of all, because that is not so much a man as an animal, with no sense of value for human life and no possibility for redemption. The scariest part of it all, of course, is that The Misfit is not a misfit at all– he is our world, he is a reflection of ourselves– our own amorality, our own loss of humanity, our own spiritual emptiness. Nancy Barendse writes: The conversation between the grandmother and the Misfit gets the grandmother to the point where she can see and accept the action of grace in her own life and extend it to another. The Misfit gets her to the place where she can be a good woman (as opposed to a lady), making him in a sense a good man. I think a more obvious foreshadowing of the family's future than the graveyard is the description of the grandmother's attire.

She dresses so that anyone finding her dead on the side of the road would know she is a lady.