Critical Analysis Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

Fit for Killing
Mary Flannery O’Connor describes her short stories to be about “original sin”. She was a religious southern writer from Georgia. In 1953 O’Connor published her short story A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Her theme of the short story is good versus evil. Using some foreshadowing along the way. One of the main characters in the short story who is the antagonist is described as the “Misfit”, who is an escaped convict accused of murdering his father. The Bailey’s are a family of six. One of them, which is known as the grandmother, she is the protagonist. Due to the grandmother’s need to be in control the two meet, and the encounter is not pleasant. O’Connor presents to her audience the “Misfit” and the grandmother, two characters who share nothing in common, but by applying psychoanalytical criticism and text evidence the author Flannery O’Connor has underlying textual clues that proves these two characters are in fact much alike.
One of the reasons the grandmother and the misfit are alike is because they are both responsible for different murders. As discussed in the

short story the misfit killed his father and a few other people. The grandmother is to blame for her death and those of her family. A perfect example of this would be at the beginning of the story when the author uses some allusion by the grandmother telling her son that she would not be able to answer to her conscience if she had taken her family anywhere near danger ( ). What brings them together is that they will never see themselves responsible for any murders. For the grandmother sees herself as a “good Christian” woman and the misfit sees himself as an innocent man. Both selfish and ignorant seeking different things in life; ignoring their flaws in life.
Secondly, they are both hypocrites because the misfit has claimed he is not a killer yet he murders the Bailey family with no remorse. He also says that the grandmother “would have been a good if somebody was there to shoot her every second of her life” (O’Connor 951). The grandmother considers herself to be a good lady like woman, but she’s judgmental, selfish, and dishonest. These two characters are unable to see that they are humans like everybody else. They feel as if they were different from everyone else. That is why when they encounter each other the grandmother before her death sees a shocking resemblance between her and the misfit, but the realization is too late for her to right her wrongs.
Thirdly, an important factor to their similarity is that they are not “good” people. Even though the grandmother believes she is a good woman she’s not. From the beginning of the book to the very end the grandmother has judged everybody including her own family members. She felt she was more privileged than everybody until she has a long conversation with the misfit. As her family was being killed the grandmother never offered her life versus the children or even her own son. The only life she pleads for is her own. The misfit full of arrogance giving orders to two other escaped convicts claims he is not a good man but not a bad man either. He feels as if his actions are doing him good. The grandmother was an old selfish lady and the misfit was an unstable, insecure man.
In conclusion, based on the time setting and title A Good Man Is Hard to Find the misfit and the grandmother prove that it is not only hard to find a good man, but that the odds of finding a good woman are challenging as well.

Everybody interprets things differently, but O’Connor made certain of it that her audience understood the true meaning of her short story. Understanding that no man nor woman is perfect. That no matter what anyone goes through they are no different from anybody else. The theme between good versus evil connects to the character’s ability to do right from wrong. Her short stories are not only just about original sin they are about daily conflicts in society occurring back then and even in today’s time. There is a very likely chance that O’Connor was using the concept of this story to reflect her own life. Flannery O’Connor has written a great mysterious short

story!