"A Good Man Is Hard To Find"

In Flannery O’Connor’s story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” the author explores the idea of the confrontation of evil and the consequences of using unproven faith to face such a force. In this story we meet the character of the unnamed grandmother, who by all accounts is a proper Southern Christian woman with all of the traits inherent of a woman of her generation and upbringing. She is heavily judgmental of others, whether that judgment is justified or not, be it her family or the “cute little pickaninny” the family sees “standing in the door of a shack” (O’ Connor 355). The latter example also shows her innate sense of inequality as the language she used to describe the boy (O’ Connor 355) illustrates the racism bred into her culture which is something that is never questioned in her mind. She is immediately mistrustful of anyone but herself, and in her own words “’It isn’t a soul in this green world of God’s that you can trust,’ she said. ‘And I don’t count nobody out of that, not nobody’” (O’ Connor 357). These three factors, her rushes to judgment, her inane sense of social inequality, and her suspicious nature all come from a false sense of superiority that stems from her religious and social piety, and would lead me to call her the religious “pretender” of this story.

True faith is actually shown by the man who has none, in the character of The Misfit. He shows this through a few examples of what he chooses to say to and how he reacts to the grandmother during their scene in the woods. The most meaningful example is when he replies to the woman about Jesus’ raising of the dead that “if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn’t be like I am now” (O’ Connor 364). With this statement he shows that he believes in the prospect of true good and true evil. He believes that had he been witness to the redeeming act of resurrection by the hand of Jesus, even a man such as himself would be transformed from the monster he had become through the experiences of his life. His rage while making this statement, “hitting the ground with his fist” (O’ Connor 364), almost shows that he knows that there was a different path that he may have taken at some point in his life if there had been an experience that had moved him in a religious fashion. Also, he states that he refuses to pray for help.
“If you would pray,” the old lady said, “Jesus would help you.”
“That’s right,” The Misfit said.
“Well then, why don’t you pray?” she asked trembling with delight suddenly.
“I don’t want no help,” he said, “I’m doing all right by myself.” (O’Connor 363)
This to me is his twisted sense of morality, since he does not believe he will ever change, he refuses to practice sacrilege by praying for something he knows would be insincere. These characteristics of knowing right from wrong, even if on the incorrect side of the two, and truly knowing ones nature and refusing to compromise that for anything less than a moment of pure grace and true redemption is why I would consider The Misfit the true person of faith in this story.

Both of these characters receive a moment of religious grace in this story, both in the same moment, but for different reasons and each pays a unique price. The Misfit and the grandmother share a seemingly tender moment in which she reaches out to him saying “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!" (O" Connor 364). In this moment she sheds all of her pretenses and truly accepts him as a human being, reaching out to him emotionally and physically, trying to stop him from committing the act she knows is next to come. But unlike her self -serving appeals earlier in the story, this is a plea to save himself from the life he “was buried alive” in (O’ Connor 362). In her final moments the old woman came closer to the teachings she thought she had believed in than she had her entire life, and the price she paid for that was her and her family’s lives. The Misfit on the other hand, unprepared for this moment of revelation, instead of being transformed by the experience as he wished he would have been, lets instinct rule him. The price he pays is further sullying his soul at the expense of this family’s lives. Here we see a role reversal, where The Misfit becomes the religious pretender in that he refuses to see a transformative moment when it is upon him, unlike the grandmother.

Violence plays the role of a transitional medium in this case. The crash of the car leads to the meeting with The Misfit, which leads to the inevitable end. And this end leads to two characters reaching a higher understanding of their world which is summed up by The Misfit’s statement “She would have been a good woman…if it had been somebody to shoot her every minute of her life” (O’ Connor 365). The implication is that only in a moment of violence and tragedy will people become aware of and accept the true value of their being.