Throughout the story the grandmother displays selfish acts and is very manipulative towards her family. When the grandmother is faced with death she has a change of heart. I think that people in general when confronted by an unwanted situation will do anything to get out of it. Some will have a change of heart and realize their wrong doings where others will do whatever it takes whether it is right or wrong. The Misfit’s quote is insinuating that if the grandmother lived her life as she did in her last few moments she would have been a good person.
"(376) The grandmother is talking about how the misfit is a good person, yet she knows nothing about the man except the fact he is a criminal and a murderer. The Misfit’s morals are completely different from the grandmothers. The Misfit will always stand by what he believes regardless of the situation. The Misfit believes that the outcome of anything is what he creates. When the Misfit says "Yes'm," smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be known, "but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me."
The poet remains reader of how understandable Grendel's mother's response is. Another describes the loss of her son as that female horror, reminding us that the loss of a child is the worst thing imaginable for most mothers. She may not be a more terrible
In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the grandmother is a manipulative person. She influence or attempted to influence the behavior or emotions of other people. The grandmother tries to be a person that she is not. Do not try to be someone you are not. Only when the grandmother was facing death, she understood where she had gone wrong in her life.
Knowing O’Connor’s religious background will help in deconstructing the two main characters in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. Flannery O’Connor was a Christian. This is not an unbelievable thought since she grew up in the southern Bible Belt, but what can be thought of as unbelievable to some is that O’Connor was a Christian fiction writer and reading her work numerous times one would have no clue about this. She did not write in a way that was “holier than thou”, she wrote in the way of the world, through the eyes of the common man. O’Connor’s thought was that a man or woman did not want to have a story written that gave everything away, she wrote in the same way that she thought about being a good Christian, which was to make the reader
Her intentions may be pure as she wants the best for Phoebe, but it doesn’t deny the fact that she’s also doing that for her own self preservation. Secrets that are kept for one’s own, selfish intention cause pain to other, no matter who they are. A different time secrets caused pain to others was when David comes back after days of being away with a pregnant girl named Rosemary. When Paul’s trying to convince his mother to let him stay home from school he describes her as talking calmly and with red eyes from crying (276). Norah is obviously hurt that David has come back with a pregnant girl as she assumes that Rosemary’s pregnant with David’s child.
I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did”(O’Connor, 9). But actually this is just an excuse of her to visit some friends in east Tennessee. This seemingly trivial warning is also used as foreshadowing to set up a big irony: it is the grandmother that leads the whole family to the Misfit. The ostensible kindness is a proof of her selfishness. When the Misfit kills her family one by one, she never begs the criminal to spare the life of her children.
Grandma’s Personality In the short story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”, we find that Grandma, one of the main characters, aids in the death of herself and her family because of her own superior and conceited self. Grandma can be interpreted in many different ways, but I believe the strongest way to interpret her is that she is a woman who thinks highly of herself. Her actions are for her own personal gain and not considering other people’s feelings or thoughts. Throughout the story there are many scenes in which Grandma exhibits her superiority and self-conceit. The superiority and conceitedness of Grandma is portrayed at the very beginning of the story where the narrator gives us in detail what she is wearing.
She has to go everywhere we go.” When John Wesley was asked by the grandmother what he would do if confronted by the Misfit his reply was, “I’d smack his face.” But in the end we find this to be very untrue. The Misfit’s character is again the result of the breakdown in humanity, family values and all of the values that have been lost in today’s culture. The Misfit may have some social graces because he responds respectfully and apologizes to the grandmother for Bailey’s harsh comment, but there is some uneasiness about the morals his own father had as a role model. There is a hint that the Misfit’s father had a darker side and had some run-ins with the authorities. The Misfit explained to the grandmother, “Daddy was a card himself.
A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND There are few superficial similarities between The Misfit and the Grandmother in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” The true similarities between them are really beneath the surface and at once more profound. These similarities, however, are fiercely debated among O’Connor’s critics, as most disagree with her that the Misfit is the good man in her ‘parable’ (McDermott, J. V., 2010). It is only by considering that O’Connor saw the world through a prism of Christian orthodoxy, or peoples relation to Redemption by Christ, that her ‘parable’ can be seen for what it is; a comparative mystery play (Whitt, M. E., 2010). The mystery then is how two people, whose similarity appears to be that they are both blind to the root cause of their sin, can be each other’s source of redemption. The journey to revelation by common people is a primary theme in biblical stories; the underlying intent being to draw in the reader to identify with the protagonists.