Manipulative Character Of The Misfit's Journey With The Grandmother

It is often said that people don’t change. Most people evolve in their way of thinking or acting, but they never change. As the Misfit explains, he “was a different breed of dog” even as a child. A characterization that has only evolved as the story continues. In his encounter with the grandmother we can see a glimpse of how he is in acceptance of what he has become. From the beginning we can see the grandmother as a manipulative character. This manipulative nature in the end leads the family to its demise. It is obvious throughout the story that she has been this way all her life. She describes the Negro child as a “pickaninny” and relates the story of the watermelon that “a nigger boy ate […] when he saw the initials, E. A. T.!” The reader

As he declares his innocence the reader is left to wonder if what he says might hold some truth. He recalls memories of being married, and a gospel singer. "I never was a bad boy that I remember of," makes it seem as if he really might be a good person willing to forgive the lives of this family. That ray of hope is quickly shadowed by the grandmother’s mention of Jesus. For the Misfit Jesus was not a savior but had “thown everything off balance”. It is here that we begin to understand that the Misfit was fully capable of being guilty of his crimes. His lack of faith, his unwillingness to believe in anything he has not himself witnessed shows very clear in this moment. We see, as Stephen C. Bandy put it, how it has “destroyed his humanity”. It is often said that faith of any kind not just religious is taught in childhood. It is taught when a child is told to wait on presents from a Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy that doesn’t exist. The child is inherently taught to believe in something they cannot see or touch. Is this not the exact definition of faith? If then, the Misfit, has no faith, it is proof that he has not changed from a “good boy” into this man with such a violent nature. He has simply evolved from what he already was all

The Misfit is described as a person who does not believe in anything he cannot see or prove. So what is the reader to assume when he provides proof of his innocence? His memory of his father’s death due to “epidemic flu” is as vivid in his mind as any other memory. He even challenges the grandmother to “go there and see for [herself]”. If this is the case, then possibly prison destroyed all his good nature. The sense of being “buried alive” in a cell tampered with his inner compass to a point where he no longer knows the difference between good and evil. However if this is the case, it is safe to assume that just as he has lost all good, he could have just as well lost all evil. All the time spent in prison has weighed heavy on his soul. So much so that he feels he cannot “make what all [he] done wrong fit what all [he] gone through in punishment." This statement from the Misfit almost sounds like a surrender on his part. It seems as if all the things he wanted to do right in his life were done in his desperate attempt at leveling the scales in the favor of good. Once he was in prison he saw no escape and simply surrendered to his evil nature. He accepted the fact that “you 're going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it." If he could so easily forget such atrocities is that not evil in and of itself? Prison did not transform him into the Misfit, rather it