(page 234) .Misfit says that he knows that his dad died because of flu. So, he was punished wrongly. He says, “I found out the crime don’t matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man, because sooner or later you’re going to forget what it was you done and just punished for it” (page 235). Here he says that weather you kill people or take tire of car you will be punished anyway and when you will be punished you will forgot what you did and will be punished for no reason.
After the grandma is unable to persuade the family not to go to Florida, they do so anyways. Still in fear of the misfit, the grandma says: “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that a loose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (2). Ironically, the family ends up meeting the Misfit later in the story because of the grandma’s lack of knowledge of directions to a house with a “secret panel.” The reader is able to identify from the beginning that the grandma is one to not stick by her word and also thinks of herself more highly than she really is. She portrays herself as a “lady;” however, she does not know the true definition of
“…she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it.” (O’Connor 368). The main thing I see that makes this character a misfit amongst her family is the fact that she is extremely cautious and her son is more reckless. Carter 2 She would not leave the cat at the house in fear that it might brush up against the stove and turn the gas on. “…she was afraid he might brush against one of the gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself.” (O’Connor 368). And if her son would have been that cautious he would have never went down a strange dirt road in search of a random house in the country.
Murderer or hero? My fate hangs on the edge of this razor blade.”(Tellez346). If he had killed the captain, the barber would have to flee town to avoid getting caught, and this would cost him his most valued passion—being a barber. Maida asked her Uncle Nathan if he had a choice and he would always say I wanted both. This clearly shows Nathans lack of decision making skills which lead to his incomplete life.
Such as when her son Bailey does not want her to bring her cat Pitty Sing on the trip. Instead of arguing about it she just hides the cat in a basket and brings it anyway. The grandmother then wishes to go visit an old plantation along the way yet knows that Bailey will not want to do this, her solution to this is to let the children persuade him. She tells the children of a house filled with secret panels and hidden treasure, this in turn gets them excited and begging Bailey to take them there for a visit. It is quite clear that through her actions that the grandmother is very selfish thus trying to satisfy her selfishness by manipulating others.
The material possession will make people lose their mind, to let people become crazy, and then will take them down. At the novel page 127, Michele’s father said, “two ears, we'll cut off. Two!” his father was going to crazy, that all because the material possessions, Michele has know his father was a kidnapper just now. Then, with the compassion and material possessions he did choose the pity to be his way, which helped him to make choose to save Filippo when Filippo has got in to trouble. Michele has tried to save Filippo out of the hole that because the villagers become mind, and he was the only one who still has clear mind.
To gain their support, the grandmother had mentioned the existence of “secret panels” in the house. While driving on the road which was full of dust and hilly, the cat that the grandmother had brought with her in secret jumped out of a basket onto the shoulder of Bailey, her son. He lost control of the car causing it to turn over. They were waiting on the road for someone to drive by but unfortunately help would arrive in the shape of the escaped criminals. It was the end of their journey.
The cat symbolizes the things in life that the wife wants but something is keeping from them. The idea of the cat being caught in the rain represents her dreams and wants being put on hold. When she goes out into the rain the cat has disappeared within a matter of minutes. This symbolizes her dreams constantly being pushed away by her husband. At the end of the story the maid brings a cat to the room; however, we do not know if it is the same cat that she saw in the rain.
Also, she insists on unnecessarily bringing her cat along for the three day trip though she knows her son Bailey does not like traveling with pets. The grandmother’s badgering takes place in front of the grandchildren and she undermines her son’s role as a parent when she says “’ "The children have been to Florida before…you all ought to take them somewhere else for a change so they would see different parts of the world and be broad. They never have been to east Tennessee’” (O’Connor 186). So after all of this “the next morning the grandmother was the first one in the car, ready to go”, in her Sunday best no less, a clear act of spite because her efforts have not changed her son’s resolve to go to Florida. In his critical essay “Secular Meaning in 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find'” Stanley Renner says “the grandmother is a caricature of the South, but in the way that her every impulse is tainted by instinctive, unconscious egoism, she is also a droll personification of human nature as we have come to understand it in the wake of Darwin and Freud; she is, then, Reality” (Renner).
After a trip down a dirt road, the grandmother suddenly realizes the old plantation isn’t in Georgia, but in Tennessee. Too embarrassed to admit her mistake, she causes her cat (which she secretly concealed into the car in the beginning of the story) to jump on her son (Bailey), which then causes the car to crash into a ditch. An escaped convict, called