A Good Man Is Hard to Find

In this story, I feel as though there is only one religious pretender. I feel that the religious pretender is the misfit because even though he is quite intelligent in my eyes when it comes to believing in Jesus, he still kills the innocent family. I feel that if he was really a firm believer in Christ he would have shown the family at least a little mercy and wouldn't have killed them. I also feel like he made them suffer by only killing Bailey and his son first, and making the grandmother, mother, and the two girls suffer by having to hear what was going on in the woods. I feel that if he was truly a believer in Jesus he wouldn't have killed them let alone made them suffer.

I think that the grandmother is the only person who has true faith because throughout the scene with the misfit and his buddies present she tried several times to convince the misfit not to go through with killing her and her family. She also tried to convince the misfit that praying to God in a time of need would do him some good and that just going through with killing them wasn't the only answer or the only way out of the situation. I personally don't understand why he killed the family in the first place.

The only person I feel had a moment of religious grace was the grandmother because she was praying only moments before she was killed.

I think the role violence played in the equation was simply pointless. I don't think that anybody gained anything from the innocent family being killed. The background information on the misfit was too vague for me to understand why he did it, but I think maybe he felt safe in the pen, no matter how boring or how crazy it made him to be locked up in it. I think he felt a sense of satisfaction for breaking out of the pen and then he realized that he was better off in the pen than out in society so he would do anything to be found and put back in the pen, even if that meant killing an innocent family.