A Good Man Is Hard To Find Analysis Essay

I am doing my short story analysis on Mary Flannery O’Conner’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. Written in 1953 the story was influenced by her Catholic faith and southern living. She wrote, “The stories are hard because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism,” (The Habit of Being, p. 90) Much of Flannery’s story’s had insight into man’s fallen nature and his eventual redemption. Mary called her work, “stories about original sin.”
The story seems to focus on good versus evil. What we think is good may really be evil and what we think may be pure evil may really have some goodness. The grandmother has a shallow sense of goodness and seems to think of herself as a woman of Christian piety. The Misfit is a criminal who is the incarnation of true evil. He is the embodiment of true evil. The grandmother thinks good manners, good blood line and being a good person make you good. The Misfit is totally open about being bad and the opposite of the grandmother’s definition of good is and has no guilt.
Straight from the beginning the family seems

a bit dysfunctional. The family is planning a vacation to Florida but the grandmother tries to use an escaped convict, “The Misfit”, who she believes in in Florida, as her excuse not to go. Her son, Bailey, ignores what she says. June Star, Bailey’s, daughter, is very nasty, although she is quite adorable. John Wesley, June Star’s brother, is almost as nasty as she is. The children are very disrespectful to the grandmother. There is an undertone of knowing that the grandmother thinks highly of herself and that her son and grandchildren just ignore her to deal with it. I found it interesting that the brother’s name was John Wesley. I couldn’t figure out why he is named after the founder of the Methodist Church. It is a question that goes unanswered. Interestingly enough, there is also another historical figure named John Wesley. He was a gunman. His name was John Wesley Hardin. If one were to analysis John Wesley’s name as compared to The Misfit, he could say that The Misfit was a Gospel singer in his early years. He pondered on the Life of Christ and the Resurrection. He then became a murderer. The mother and the baby don’t say much at all. Their names aren’t mentioned throughout the entire story either.
There is even a point during the story when the family stops off to get some food at a place called “The Tower”. The owner of The Tower, Red Sammy, is called by name. His wife is not. It is interesting how only three characters in the story are not named. Even the grandmothers’ cat, Pity Sing is named. Although the gray monkey at The Tower isn’t named either. The henchmen are even named.
It’s interesting to note that when the henchmen of The Misfit are killing the grandmother’s family, she doesn’t seem to worry about her grandchildren, only her precious Bailey Boy.
The grandmother places a lot of emphasis on being a “lady” and outward appearances. On the day of the trip she even dresses up and wears a pretty hat. She does this so that if there is an accident and she is lying on the side of the road, anyone that passes by will see her and know that she is “a lady”. She associates good people with upper class society coming from respectable plantations. She wishes children were polite like they used to be as opposed to how disrespectful her son and grandchildren are now.
During the confrontation with The Misfit the grandmother brings up Jesus. She is hoping that The Misfit will spare her life by imploring to his religious sense. In reality, The Misfit has thought about Jesus more seriously than she has. The Misfits doubts in Jesus leads him to think that there is no real right or wrong and no ultimate point in life. That is why he says he doesn’t care about what he does and has no remorse or guilt.
The ending is one that is hopeful.

The grandmother receives what Catholics call a “moment of grace.” Grace fills the grandmother with a supernatural love and understanding that helps her to see The Misfit as a fellow suffering human being whom she is obligated to love. At that very moment she receives divine grace that transforms both her and The Misfit. Jesus has commanded us all to love others as we love ourselves, including our enemies. It is in this view that the grandmother realizes that she, as a human being is inclined toward evil, pettiness, and selfishness. She could never have come to such selfless love without God’s grace. It is at the end that she tells The Misfit, “You’re one of my own children!” She then realizes that The Misfit is one of her children, in the sense that we are all God’s children, and that if she practiced what she preached, maybe this situation would have ended

different.
We may make mistakes our entire lives but in the end we can have true remorse and in that single moment God can give us a moment of grace. It is also true that those we view as good may have evil within and those we view as evil may know more about the goodness in the world than we anticipated.
Some readers have trouble dealing with O’Conner’s violent images. On October 14, 1963, she wrote, “I suppose the reasons for the use of so much violence in modern fiction will differ with each writer that uses it, but in my own stories I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned to at considerable cost, is one which is seldom understood by the casual reader, but it is one which is implicit in the Christian view of the world.”