The Good, the Bad and Jesus Christ - Meditation on Morals and Religion in Flannery O'Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find

Flannery O'Connor was born on March 25, 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, into a religious family. That was quite usual in the South at the time. What was unusual in O’Connor is that she was an educated woman in the area. The lack of intellectuality of people in the South and the steep, enraptured clinging on to their religion at the same time remained a constant issue in O’Connor’s works. Her writings often take place in the South, demonstrating morally corrupted characters, their ways towards their dark faith which is foreshadowed by various grotesque elements. These works evoke moral and religious questions in the reader. Her short story A Good Man is Hard to Find does not fall out of this pattern either. In her own, ironic way she makes fun of the Southerners as she is barding the grandmother with all their typical characteristics, the qualities, which she most obviously wishes to criticize. Still, the seemingly deeply religious grandmother and all her flaws appear to be dwarfed by the vicious cruelty of a serial killer calling himself the Misfit. But is that really so? Who is good and who is evil in the story? Is the grandmother a true believer of God? In my essay I am focusing on the answers for such questions.

To outline my argument, I would start with the grandmother, describing her values and faults. In the beginning of the story we are introduced to a grandmother baring the values of an average old lady. She seems to be caring about her grandchildren, trying to convince their parents to go to Tennessee on vacation instead of Florida, which they have already seen and which will not help them a bit in getting to know the world better and being “broad”. A positive thing might be that on the morning of the trip, she is the first one to sit in the car ready for the route in her “lady-like” dressing. Her precision also shows when she is actually putting down the current stance of the mileage of the car so that she can later fill in the family about the length of the road taken. An undoubtedly good quality of the grandmother might appear to be her effort to call the attention of the children on the importance of good manners:

In my time […] children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. (2)

Near the end of the story, the grandmother creates the impression of a true believer by revealing such words and attributes as she is trying to convince the Misfit about his own goodness being dominant and that he should turn to Jesus:

"If you would pray," the old lady said, "Jesus would help you." (10)

Now these are mainly all the parameters of the grandmother which can be mentioned as good. If we analyze her personality in a deeper sense, we will find that even these serve only a kind of a superficial “goodness”. Her true color is developing all through the story and gets shown quite clearly in the end: the grandmother is definitely not as spotless as she firs might appear. The above named virtues get undermined right after we understand the purpose of them. The grandmother is apparently caring only because she wants her own ways to prevail. While she is aware of the fact that her mere thoughts are ignored, she has to reach for other ways to gain control. This way she manipulates her surroundings in the wisest ways, trying to raise a sense of guilt and responsibility in the parents or winning the sympathy of the children, whose words certainly cannot get ignored by the parents:

"Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did." (1)

"There was a secret:-panel in this house," she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were, "and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found . . ." (5)

The Grandmothers “lady-like” dressing and manners also serve a special purpose: a “spit-and-polish” way of appearance, suggesting us that for her the shell is more important, than the actual content:

Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady. (2)

When it comes to manners, the old lady gives an impression of the most well behaved person, who could most probably serve as a role-model for the grandchildren, teaching them what is polite for one to say and what is not and right at the meantime she spoils this false image with her own childish remark added to the wise speech and addressing a little black child with a derogative expression:

[…] People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. (2)

The religious confidence of the grandmother leaves much room for improvement, for it does not look as if she was a genuine believer of anything, or anyone. Religion for her is also just another equipment to coat herself into a more appealing robe, another wicked way of her hypocrisy. A real religious person would willingly accept his or her fate, not being afraid to leave this world, while the grandmother desperately tries to convince the Misfit that her life should be spared, she even goes on bagging the merciless killer:

"Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I know you wouldn't shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I'll give you all the money I've got!" (11)

Still, the biggest sin of the grandmother is her enormous selfishness, that leads up to all the tragedy right from the beginning, the same selfishness that makes her bag for her own life and not her family’s. There are times when she could still save the family from the devastation they are driving at, but her selfishness is the one force pushing them further into their misery. Even after the car has flipped and the mother has one shoulder broken from defending the baby, she can only think of herself, similar to the situation, when she first recognizes the Misfit for the whole family’s doom and her first reaction is thinking of her own life:

"You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" the grandmother said and removed a clean handkerchief from her cuff and began to slap at her eyes with it. (8)

The Misfit does not show up until the half of the story, but we can already count on his appearance, as the newspaper article and several conversations foreshadow his inevitable coming. We are given the feeling that something is just wrong with the figure right as we meet him. He is suspicious with his slow, measured moving, the way he gets nervous from children, not to mention that he does not have any shirt on. It is debatable how it would have made any difference if the grandmother would not have recognized the Misfit in him. There are several hints suggesting that in the end things might have turned out in a nicer way, such examples are the lines where the Misfit insists that it would have been better for all of them, had the grandmother not done so and when he replies to the grandmother’s question if she would shoot a lady "I would hate to have to" (8). This might make us think that the Misfit is not a wholly evil person. Shortly after that however the parents and children get dragged into the woods and there shot by his word. When the grandmother tries to look for the good in him, he deliberately adds himself: "Nome, I ain't a good man" (9). He talks in a relaxed way, probably in a low voice and most honestly about his life and conceptions. These lines rather sound like some excuse, an explanation for his evil acts.

I never was a bad boy that I remember of," The Misfit said in an almost dreamy voice, "but somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary. I was buried alive […] (10)

Such wonderings of his shape a wicked, sick mind and pattern of thoughts in the reader, alluding that whatever he does, he does it on a motif out of himself, as if he would not take the blame for such deeds. When the grandmother tries to come up with religious sentiments and see if the Misfit prays, it suddenly gets clear that he had already considered such questions and probably thought about Jesus much more than she ever did. Only his conclusion differs vastly. For the Misfit the fundaments of the belief and the uncertainty is unacceptable. He creates in his mind from these a more or less a nihilistic world view, for which he even argues:

"Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl. (11)

The instability of his theory and of his twisted mind shows as he gets into his enthusiast speech so much that he even seems to get lost in it for a slight fragment of a moment. In this very moment, the Misfit is seen as what I would suggest is his real identity: a scared, mislead, lost and vulnerable man in need of serious help. In the same moment the grandmother recognizes his vulnerability as well and sees the slightest chance to gain control over the outrageous Misfit by manipulation. Unfortunately for her, the Misfit realizes the same thing.

Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now." His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children !" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. (12)

He immediately falls back into his Misfit-role as his two fellows arrive back at the scene.

To conclude what has been said I would say Flannery O’Connor suggests that from the two antitypes not one model is better than the other, meaning that it can be just as wrong to be a shallow fake of a good man as being a completely lost, degenerated soul. The grandmother’s character cannot achieve the “good” label, as she is untrue on the inside, not a devoted prayer, just acting out a noble role which she knows would be right. To quote the Misfit: "She would of been a good woman, […] if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." (12) – translated in my views that as soon as her life is threatened, the grandmother notably gives her true self. As it appears the Misfit knows just as good what the road of the righteous would be, he simply refuses to follow it, he is just straightforwardly evil. If he had the chance, maybe he would have done the good thing, but right know he sticks to the “Misfit” which at least brings that he carries out no false acts other than what he is. Little does this prettify the fact of being a killer.









Works Cited
O’Connor, Flannery. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Web.
Major Themes In "A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, echeat.com 2005. Web.
A Good Man is Hard to Find Theme of Religion, shmoop.com Web.
A Good Man is Hard to Find Theme of Good vs. Evil, shmoop.com Web.
Flannery O'Connor, Wikipedia.org Web.