"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

Devin Ingersoll
AP English-3
Analysis on “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
At first glance of “A Good man Is Hard to Find,” it appears to be that the grandmother is ignored and unappreciated by her family; as a result, the reader feels pity for her. However, in actuality, the grandmother acts in her own interest and disregards her family. Up until the arrival of the Misfit at the car accident, the grandmother’s selfish nature is masked by the initial impression that she is mistreated and disrespected by her own family.

From the very start, it appears to be that the grandmother’s family is extremely disrespectful to her; her son and daughter-in-law completely ignore her and refuse to respond to anything she says while the children are rude and talk back to her. When the grandmother was trying to show her son the newspaper article about the Misfit heading to Florida, her son acts as if she hadn’t said anything at all and continues to read what is in front of him. However, the grandmother’s sole intentions for showing her son the article were to persuade him of not going to Florida, but rather Tennessee, for their family vacation. The grandmother wanted to go to Tennessee to visit her “connections” (1). As the narrator says, “she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s [her son’s] mind” (1). To no avail, the grandmother attempts to manipulate her son and her daughter-in-law by planting the idea of guilt over losing their children to the Misfit. Even after she gives up on going to Tennessee for the vacation, the grandmother defies her son again by sneaking in her cat despite the fact that her son does not like to have the cat come along. To justify her disregard for her son she comes up with an absurd and unlikely hypothetical situation; she was worried the cat “might brush against one of the gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself” (10). This obscure thought of the grandmother’s is O’Connor’s way of mocking the grandmother’s selfishness. O’Connor adds a tinge of sarcasm to yet another statement when she describes the grandmother’s perfectly put together outfit for the road trip; “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead in the highway will know at once that she was a lady” (12). Not only does this quote further mock the grandmother’s self-serving and superficial nature, but it also foreshadows the ending of the story.

When the Misfit came and the grandmother recognized who he was, she only cared about him not killing her; not once does she try to save her family—in fact, she even offers the Misfit one of her son’s shirts. Instead, the grandmother just repeatedly says, “You wouldn’t hurt a lady, would you?” (87). Although the grandmother had assumed herself to be a lady, she and the reader come to the realization at the end that she has not been a lady; rather, the grandmother had acted in selfish ways throughout the entire story. O’Connor uses the grandmother’s interaction with the Misfit to make both the grandmother and the reader recognize the grandmother’s true nature. At the point in which the grandmother is threatened with death by the Misfit’s gun, the grandmother begins to portray “good” qualities; she continuously encourages the Misfit to pray and finds herself repeating “Jesus” with the meaning that “Jesus will help you” (129). In spite of the grandmother’s pleads to not kill her, the Misfit still kills her and says exactly what O’Connor is trying to convey, “She would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (141). With this statement, O’Connor conveys the idea that human beings may have the tendency to act as good people only in times of desperate measures. (639)

How does the scene at Red Sammy's Barbecue advance the story toward its conclusion?

Why do you think the grandmother is never referred to as “their” grandmother or some other term that shows a sense of belonging to the family?

How would you respond to a reader who complained, "The title of this story is just an obvious platitude"?