Deciphering The Misfit: A Character Analysis

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Lambert 1Lambert, Brandi(put course and section number)(put instructor’s name)18 September 2017A Characterization of The MisfitIn Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” the character of The Misfit is not easily understood. At times he is gentle, at times harsh. Some of his statements and actions show him to be wise, and some show him to be clueless and out of touch with reality. He is at times moral, and at other times completely amoral. His character is a combination of opposites. The Misfit first appears a little more than halfway through the story. His actions and words show him to be both gentle and harsh. He is gentle with the grandmother, saying “Lady, don’t you get upset” (147) when her son curses

When he gently asks the family to step into the woods, he is sending them to their death. Despite his gentleness with the grandmother, he shoots her himself – three times - when she touches him. The story describes his response to her touch as being “as if a snake had bitten him” (153), suggesting that her touch repulses him. It would be easy to say his actions show his gentleness to be insincere. But he is sincere – he can’t pretend to blush, and that he “reddened” shows he was truly upset by Bailey’s comments to a woman he knows he’ll kill in the next few minutes. There is no easy way for the grandmother – or the reader – to reconcile that this is a man who speaks gently, andyet seems to find it easy to murder those with whom he’s gentle.His character also seems to encompass both wisdom and a bewildering cluelessness about his own life and history. He is described as having “a scholarly look” (146). His words often show deep thought that suggests wisdom. He remembers how his father characterized him as one who “has to know why it is” (147), and throughout the scene in the story, he seems to be working things out in his mind. “Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and the other ain’t punished at all?” he asks (151). When she offers him money not to kill her, he responds with a complex statement that requires thought

He was told he’d killed his father, but hismemory is that his father died of the flu (150). “I call myself The Misfit," he says, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment" (151). His intelligence isn’t enough to let him understand the major features of his life. His family and his time in prison make no sense to him, and have no reason or meaning. He is a murderer, and seems amoral in his ability to kill without remorse, or even without memory of killing. But he is also oddly moral. He has killed people since he escaped from prison (137), it’s likely he killed his own father (150), and it’s clear he is going to kill the grandmother and her family – he says so, almost regretfully, when he says “it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me" (147). When the men return from murdering Bailey, theyare carrying Bailey’s shirt, which The Misfit puts on (150). For him, Bailey is a problem while alive, and in death only has meaning for the shirt The Misfit needs. The murder of the baby is a particularly amoral act, as the baby is too young to identify The Misfit. That murder is so meaningless that it isn’t even noted in the story except by the number of shots fired in the woods – the mother, June Star, and a third shot that must have been the shot that kills the baby