A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor

Theme Good vs. Evil

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a confrontation of between a grandmother with a rather superficial sense of goodness, and a criminal who embodies real evil. The grandmother seems to treat goodness mostly as a function of being decent, having good manners, and coming from a family of "the right people." What a contrast, when the grandmother encounters The Misfit, who seems straightforwardly evil, with little to no sense of guilt, and a genuine desire to do cruel or destructive things for their own sake. Understanding the motivations of The Misfit, and what "goodness" means by contrast, is one of the central puzzles of the story.

Symbolism Toombsboro

"Toomsboro" is mentioned (45) as the town the family passes right when the grandmother wakes up to remember the old plantation that isn't really there. In other words, "Toomsboro" is mentioned right before the family falls into the hands of The Misfit. The word itself sounds like tomb, so we get some foreshadowing that the family is headed for doom.

John Wesley

A loud, obnoxious, eight-year-old boy. John Wesley wants to visit the house the grandmother talks about because she says it has a secret panel.

The Misfit

A wanted criminal who stumbles upon the family when they crash their car in the woods. The Misfit lives by a moral code that involves murder and remorselessness, but he also spends time wondering about Jesus. Because he doesn't know for sure whether Jesus really raised the dead, he has opted for "meanness" as a way of giving his life meaning. He doesn't see himself as a terrible person. His two henchmen kill the entire family, and the Misfit shoots the grandmother himself.

The Grandmother

An irksome woman who lives with Bailey and his family. During the family's journey to Florida, the grandmother suggests that they visit an old house she remembers, an idea that leads to a car accident and the murder of everyone in the group. Before she is killed, the grandmother remembers that the house is actually in Tennessee, nowhere near where she said it was. She tries to reason with the Misfit but only enrages him. She experiences a moment of grace right before the Misfit shoots her.

June Star

An obnoxious young girl. June Star loudly speaks her mind and makes cutting observations about those around her.

The Mother

Bailey's wife and the mother of John Wesley, June Star, and a baby. The mother breaks her shoulder in the car crash and is eventually killed by the Misfit's henchmen.

Style

Bare Bones and Folksy - O'Connor once said she could only write one type of sentence (source: The Habit of Being, p. 69). There's a bit of truth to that. Many of her sentences are bare bones consisting of: subject, verb, some modifiers, and nothing more. We don't find many descriptive words or complicated structures in her writing. In addition, there's not much that feels clipped (like Hemingway) and certainly nothing flashy or unconventional in the postmodern vein. Nope, just plain, meat and potatoes sentences. You can really notice this in paragraphs without dialogue, where one short, simple sentence after another begins with the subject: He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside into the white sunlight and looked at the monkey in the lacy chinaberry tree. He was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if it were a delicacy. (44) See what we mean? The simple construction of the narrator's sentences complements the colorful speech of O'Connor's characters. Notice that O'Connor often fully writes out the accents and regional speech of her characters (read anything The Misfit says for an example of this). It also enables O'Connor to use the written equivalent of deadpan delivery when she wants to be funny.

Theme Family

Besides its more serious themes, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" contains some mercilessly funny comedy about a dysfunctional family, and the ways they get on each other's nerves. You know, the kind of family that could be in a National Lampoon movie? There's the two troublesome and annoying kids, the hot-headed dad who tries to maintain control of a situation and fails, the wife busy attending to the baby, and the grandmother, who's a case all to herself (and also the main character). Though the story starts out seeming like a comedy, it takes a serious turn when the family encounters a criminal, who kills them one by one. Whether this family members attract any genuine sympathy from the reader, or from each other, or whether they death presents little more than a black comedy is an issue up for debate.

Tone and Style

Cynical and Caricaturing, at times Dehumanizing...or is it Humanizing? - Many readers are struck by the apparent cynicism of O'Connor's writing. As a narrator, she rarely seems sympathetic to the characters of her story. On the contrary, she seems more interested in bringing out their worst, exposing their superficialities, and then making the reader laugh at them. Sometimes she accomplishes this by being disarmingly upfront, as with many of the grandmother's little manipulations: She knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors were still standing. "There was a secret panel in this house," she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were... (45) More striking, though, the narrator often describes the characters in as caricatures - as if they were exaggerated, laughable, and rather grotesque cartoons. The grandmother, for example: There were two more pistol reports and the grandmother raised her head like a parched old turkey hen crying for water and called, "Bailey Boy, Bailey Boy!" as if her heart would break. (133) Although that makes us laugh, it also troubles us a bit. In that passage, for example, the grandmother has just lost all her family members, and is (at least we think) in a moment of incredible despair. The reader should sympathize with her at this moment. Yet she's described as a turkey, in a way that makes her seem gross and funny to the reader, more like a cartoon image than a human being. Does that "dehumanize" her? Does O'Connor show human beings at their comically exaggerated worst, in a way that makes it impossible to feel sorry for them? A lot of people think so, and for that reason Flannery O'Connor's writing has been called "grotesque" (source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, p. 40). By "grotesque," critics mean the people in O'Connor's stories are ugly, gross cartoon figures, rather than real human beings possessing good qualities with which we can sympathize. But O'Connor did not agree with that label, and thought it reflected a northern bias against the South. She felt that she was being realistic. In O'Connor's opinion, if we're honest with ourselves, the world we live in and the people in it often are like caricatures, and much harder to sympathize with than the people we read about in books. To keep ourselves sane and humble, we can laugh at them (provided we recognize we're just as laughable as everyone else is). But ultimately, the real task is to sympathize regardless (source: Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, p. 40). So the author's point is, even if the grandmother looks an awful lot like an old turkey at her most desperate moment, we should still sympathize with her. Instead of looking at her work as grotesque, O'Connor herself called her work honest "Catholic realism."

Theme Manipulation

Flannery O'Connor understood her story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" as a tale of good, evil, and divine grace. Other critics, however, have seen in it something more cynical. Many see it as the story of a selfish woman who uses manipulation to get what she wants, but is ultimately unable to save herself by her acts. There are several moments in the story when the grandmother manipulates others, including her family members and the criminal. An interesting question is whether she ever stops manipulating, and, if so, when.

Setting

Georgia, sometime in the 1940s or after - The story takes place in Georgia. We don't have much in the way of a description of the original setting. This tale begins in a nameless city where the family lives, and takes us various places along the road as the family travels. Plenty of local color - there are the old plantations that get passed, and Red Sammy's roadside barbeque joint. The second half of the story takes place in the ditch in the middle of nowhere where the family lands after running off the road. We're told the ditch is about ten feet below the road, and lies between the road and a "tall and dark and deep" forest. There's forest on the other side of the road too, so the forest "looms" menacingly over the scene on both sides. This part of the story is like a staged play: the site of the action doesn't move, the ditch is the stage, and the forest is "backstage," where characters are taken. We only learn what's going happening from the noises people make (usually screams or gunshots). As for the time, the era of the story is never explicitly defined, but given the cars and the mention of Gone With the Wind (published as a book in 1936 and released as a movie in 1939), we can guess it's the 1940's or later. Since there's no mention of a war going on, and the grandmother says that "the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money" (44), it's almost certainly after the war, meaning late '40s or early '50s. That would be right about when O'Connor wrote the story (1953) anyway.

Bobby Lee

One of the escaped criminals. Bobby Lee is fat and, according to June Star, looks like a pig.

Hiram

One of the escaped criminals. Hiram wears a gray hat and inspects the family's car.

Theme Society and Class

The grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" gives great importance to being "a lady," and her ideas about what that means reflect an old-fashioned, somewhat upper-crust Southern mindset. She uses the n-word and longs for the good old days when kids were polite, people were trustworthy, and there were pretty plantations to visit. All of this leads her to associate being "good" with coming from a respectable family and behaving like a member of her social class; those who don't are outsiders. Her sensibilities are in for quite a shock when she meets The Misfit.

Theme Religion

The central confrontation between the grandmother and The Misfit in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" revolves around Jesus. The grandmother brings up praying to Jesus in the hope that she can induce The Misfit to spare her life by appealing to his religious sense. It turns out, however, that The Misfit has probably thought about Jesus more seriously than she has. The Misfit's doubt in Jesus leads him to think that there is no real right or wrong, and no ultimate point to life. At the story's climax, the grandmother appears to receive a moment of divine grace, which might transform her and The Misfit. How this ending is understood is the major question of the story.

Symbolism - The Cloudless, Sunless Sky

The cloudless, sunless sky is mentioned several times after the family has the car accident, and most notably by The Misfit shortly after we meet him (89). This peculiar sky is also mentioned by the narrator after the grandmother has been shot ("her face smiling up at the cloudless sky" [137]). If there's no sun and no clouds, we would expect it to be night. But the narrator never tells us it's night or dark, and the grandmother remarks, right after The Misfit mentions the sky, that it's a "beautiful day" (90). Is it just after sunset? This sky is also an ambiguous image, in that it has two sides. On the one hand, there's something barren and austere about the cloudless, sunless sky because it's empty. You might see this emptiness as a reflection of the family's extreme situation at the end of the story: they're dying in the middle of nowhere, without anyone to help them. You might also think this sky complements the character of The Misfit. The Misfit is "empty" inside - he's lost all sense of good, but isn't passionate about evil either. He's also the character who, unlike the grandmother, isn't concerned with appearances, and wants to get straight to the heart of things. It may be significant that he's the first character to mention the sky. On the other hand, a cloudless sky is often considered an ingredient of a beautiful day, and the grandmother says it's a beautiful day right after The Misfit mentions the sky. Looking at the image this way gives it two different consequences. The beautiful, cloudless day contrasts sharply with the events that are happening under it; murders in the woods in the middle of nowhere should happen during a dark and stormy night, not a beautiful cloudless day. There's something jarring about that which makes it all the more disturbing to the reader. But when it returns for the last time in the description of the grandmother's smiling face, the image of the cloudless sky seems to transform, suggesting the peace the grandmother found in her last moment.

Symbolism The Dark Forest

The forest that looms over the ditch where the family's trapped, "tall and dark and deep" (70), is another image in keeping with the hearse and Toombsboro. The forest is threatening, and suggests the impending death of the family. Keep in mind that it is where everyone, except the grandmother, is taken to be shot.

Bailey

The frazzled head of the family. Bailey seems to love his mother, but her needling behavior sometimes gets the best of him. He gives in to the grandmother's request to visit the old plantation house that she remembers only because the children are driving him crazy. When the grandmother's cat jumps onto his shoulder, he wrecks the car. He tries to quiet the grandmother and stop her from provoking the three criminals, but he is ineffective. He and John Wesley are the first to be killed by the Misfit.

Red Sammy Butts

The owner of the Tower restaurant. Red Sammy is a good man according to the grandmother, trusting and even gullible to a fault.

Plot

The story opens as a family prepares to go on vacation in Florida. The story focuses immediately on the grandmother, who wants to visit relatives in east Tennessee and who uses the escape of the Misfit, a murderer, from prison to try to persuade her son, Bailey, to change his mind. He refuses. The two grandchildren, John Wesley and June Star, are quickly characterized as smart alecks who nevertheless understand their grandmother and her motives very well. When the family sets out, the grandmother is resigned to making the best of things. She is first to get into the car and has even, secretly, brought along her cat. As she rides along, her conversation is conventional, self-centered, and shallow. When the family stops for lunch at a barbeque stand, their conversation again turns to the Misfit, and the adults agree that people are simply not as nice as they used to be. Later, back in the car, the grandmother persuades Bailey to take a road which she imagines (wrongly, as it turns out) will lead by an old mansion. Suddenly the cat escapes its basket and jumps on Bailey's neck, and the car runs into the ditch. As the family assesses its injuries, a man who is obviously the Misfit drives up with his armed henchmen. The grandmother immediately feels that she recognizes him as someone she has known all of her life, and she tells him that she knows who he is. Methodically, the henchmen lead first Bailey and then the mother and children off to be shot in the woods while the Misfit begins to talk about himself and his life of crime. He blames his career on Jesus, who, he says, threw everything "off balance" by raising the dead. Because the Misfit cannot be sure that the miracle really occurred, he cannot know how to think about it. If Jesus really raised the dead, the Misfit says, the only logical response would be to drop everything and follow him. If he did not, then life is meaningless and only crime makes sense: "No pleasure but in meanness." The grandmother is terrified; she knows that she, too, will be shot. Yet she knows something more, and suddenly she stops her empty prayers and meaningless assertions that the Misfit is a "good man," to utter perhaps the truest words of her life in telling him that he is one of her own children. At that, the Misfit shoots her, but he says that she would have been a good woman if someone had been there to shoot her every minute of her life. O'Connor intends the reader to take the Misfit's comments seriously (he is the most serious-minded character in the story, after all) and notice that the grandmother, in her moment of receiving grace, has recognized that she and the Misfit (and presumably all the rest of humanity) are related as children of God. She is left in death smiling up at God's sky.

Point of View

Third Person (Limited Omniscient) - The story is told in the third person, and it centers singularly on the grandmother. She's the character we're told the most about, by far. She's also the only character whose point of view we can access directly. We get to hear her thoughts and feelings, although we never get too much detail. We are usually given a direct, short summary that leaves a lot of room for imagination on the part of the reader. (That there is room for interpretation with regard to the grandmother's inner thoughts continues to be a subject of debate). The only other character who is given comparable attention is The Misfit. Interestingly, we only learn about him through the grandmother's perspective. After the grandmother is killed, though, there is a brief switch to The Misfit's perspective (although we don't get any further into his head). Some early critics really didn't like this shift in perspective at the end. They claim that O'Connor's handling of point-of-view is sloppy. On the other hand, if she wanted the story to continue after its main character died, what choice did she have? Besides, the story might be about the beginnings of The Misfit's transformation as well.

Symbolism "Big black battered hearse-like automobile"

This is the description given of The Misfit's car as it approaches the family (70). A hearse, in case you're not familiar with the word, is a vehicle that carries a coffin to a funeral. So, this is another image of imminent death, which foreshadows the fate of the family before The Misfit and company even get out of the car.