Flannery O\'Connor - \"A Good

Flannery O'Connor - "A Good Man if Hard to Find"

The value of Flannery O'Connor's a Good Man is Hard to Find is paramount as a message of providence and personal choices. Challenges in the work are many, the old generation meeting the ideals of the new as well as the constant challenges to one's ideals and faith as a matter of taking the wrong turn on a road, less traveled. "The road looked as if no one had traveled on it in months." ("A Good Man is Hard to Find" O'Connor) the indications of the story are of generational angst and future shock, as well as a disturbance of faith. O'Connor's family in the work is a typical black middle class family, seeking out adventure in the past, while trying to be starkly in the future, accepting their station in life by condescending those less fortunate. The "roadtrip" mentality ensues as the family travels down the highway, gawking at the scenery of rural depravity, through a looking glass that sets them aside and above it.

In the short story a family of middle class black folk with two young children, an infant, a grandmother and two parents seek out on a reluctant adventure, a three day vacation to Florida. Each of the characters has a different idea about the nature of their vacation as well as the nature of the world. The children are spoiled and whiny, the father, Bailey is strong willed and his wife is a quintessential shadow caregiver, while the grandmother is a talkative woman recalling the past more than the present and transfixed on the idea, as many her age are that you can't trust anyone anymore. The adventures are convinced to take a turn on a dirt road to find a house that the grandmother visited as a young lady, though she later recalls that the house is in a different state, as they drive their antics and the family cat which was ferreted away by the grandmother despite her son's desire to leave it home, springs up and startles the driver, causing an accident. Once the family has crawled from the wreckage they are met by an infamous foreshadowed escaped criminal, Misfit whose gang proceeds to shoot all of them, saving the "talker" grandmother for last. (O'Connor) the work expresses, the generation gap, but more importantly the work is a call to lose one's faith, by chance, faith in humanity, faith in status and lastly faith in God.

The first indications of the loss of faith in humanity, are demonstrated by the grandmother's desperate attempts to convince Bailey, her son that the family should not go to Florida, but should go to Tennessee to see relatives. She loses out to the families desire to participate in more upper class adventures in Florida. In a biographical sketch of Flannery O'Connor that recounts meanings and messages behind her writings, the story is described as "certainly the funniest mass-murder story ever written." (Cheaney 255) the humor in the story is the antics of the family as they separate themselves from humanity, by the virtue of having become middle class urban dwellers. The grandmother's chatty ways, and her descriptive expression of separation from the rural humanity, which had likely been her recent past can be summed up in the expression of one of her comical anecdotes,

Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack. "Wouldn't that make a picture, now?" she asked and they all turned and looked at the little Negro out of the back window. He waved "He didn't have any britches on," June Star said. "He probably didn't have any," the grandmother explained. "Little riggers in the country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture," she said. The children exchanged comic books." (O'Connor)

At the same time that she is speaking of the scene of depravity as picturesque she is separating herself from the scene, and the children's disinterest is further expressive of their loss of connection to family and history, equivalent to their rejection of visiting family in Tennessee which the young boy, John Wesley calls "...just a hillbilly dumping ground," (O'Connor)

The idea of the rejection of faith in status is also characterized in the work as a central theme. Blythe and Sweet compare the short story to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and states that the story is an.." attempt to define the good man and good woman of their age within a Christian context." (Blythe, and Sweet 49) the rejection of status, is last characterized by the end of the family, as they take a wrong turn on the less traveled road and meet death, regardless of their insular existence as an urban middle class family, but it is also foreshadowed by their earlier travels. One example in the work is the commissary conversation the grandmother has with the barbeque sandwich purveyor.

Red Sam came in...His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones and his stomach hung over them like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. He came over and sat down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and yodel. "You can't win," he said. "You can't win," and he wiped his sweating red face off with a gray handkerchief. "These days you don't know who to trust," he said. "Ain't that the truth?" "People are certainly not nice like they used to be," said the grandmother. "Two fellers come in here last week," Red Sammy said, "driving a Chrysler. It was an old beat-up car but it was a good one and these boys looked all right to me. Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?" "Because you're a good man!" The grandmother said at once. "Yes'm, I suppose so," Red Sam said as if he were struck with this answer. His wife brought the orders, carrying the five plates all at once without a tray, two in each hand and one balanced on her arm. "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," she repeated, looking at Red Sammy. (O'Connor)

The character's commiserate that status makes little difference, appearances are deceiving, and that there are no trustworthy or kind people left in the world. The loss of faith in status, is blind in the work, as the family, goes on to characterize their surroundings as below them, but the message is clear, everyone is the same and no one can be trusted. "Its message is profoundly pessimistic and in fact subversive to the doctrines of grace and charity, despite heroic efforts to disguise that fact. This vexing little masterpiece cannot be saved from itself. It has a will of its own and a moral of its own." (Bandy 107) the value of the passage from the story above goes on to foreshadow the attack by the Misfit gang, with the wife of the barbeque salesman intoning the "idea of the gang" robbing the store at any time, the second mention of "Misfit" the first being an allegorical threat to her grandchild, when she was speaking vainly about her appearance.

The last but probably most poignant message of the work is the idea of the loss of faith. The grandmother is indicated as the only deep character who ever had faith in God, as her progeny live outside of the morals of her generation. The conversations between the grandmother and Misfit are those that most express the loss of faith.

Alone with the Misfit, the grandmother found that she had lost her voice.... She wanted to tell him that he must pray.... Finally she found herself saying, "Jesus. Jesus," meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing. "Yes'm, the Misfit said as if he agreed. "Jesus shown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn't committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course," he said, "they never shown me my papers. That's why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you'll have something to prove you ain't been treated right. I call myself the Misfit," he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."... "Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain't punished at all?" "Jesus!" The old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I know you wouldn't shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady.... "Lady,"...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. "Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," the Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl. "Maybe He didn't raise the dead," the old lady mumbled, not knowing what she was saying and feeling so dizzy that she sank down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her. "I wasn't there so I can't say He didn't," the Misfit said. "I wisht I had of been there," he said, hitting the ground with his fist. "It ain't right I wasn't there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now." His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest.... Hiram and Bobby Lee returned from the woods and stood over the ditch, looking down at the grandmother who half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky. Without his glasses, the Misfit's eyes were red-rimmed and pale and defenseless-looking. "Take her off and thow her where you thown the others," he said, picking up the cat that was rubbing itself against his leg. "She was a talker, wasn't she?" Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with a yodel. "She would of been a good woman," the Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." "Some fun!" Bobby Lee said. "Shut up, Bobby Lee," the Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life." (O'Connor)