The Grandmother's Moral Failure in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

Introduction and Research Focus

For the purposes of this essay, I chose Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." It is an apt topic for research such as this because the ambiguity of the story's position regarding a grandmother who is ultimately responsible for the death of her entire family leads to a wide variety of possible readings, each with its own adherents and defenders. Upon reading the story, I immediately questioned the grandmother's role and especially whether the story portrayed her in a positive or negative light. Although at points she appears positive in contrast to the other characters, she is ultimately shown to be reactive, shortsighted, and altogether incapable of protecting either her family or herself.

Using Google Scholar, I searched for academic essays and books discussing "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" with an eye toward those readings that deal explicitly with the grandmother. Although all the sources considered offered useful insights into the story's meaning, the most useful were Stephen Bandy's essay "'One of My Babies': The Misfit and the Grandmother" and John Desmond's article "Flannery O'Connor's Misfit and the Mystery of Evil," because both focused on the grandmother's final moments with the Misfit — a scene that is crucial for understanding the story's position regarding the grandmother but which nonetheless defies easy interpretation, leaving the precise meaning and effect of her final words ambiguous.

Plot Overview and the Grandmother's Role

Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" follows a grandmother (referred to only as "the grandmother"), her adult son, and his family as they drive through Georgia toward a vacation in Florida. The grandmother does not want to go to Florida, and instead attempts to convince her son, Bailey, that they should all go to Tennessee — not least because an escaped convict calling himself "the Misfit" is supposedly headed to Florida. The family heads to Florida anyway, and the grandmother shifts tactics: rather than trying to change the destination, she tries to coax Bailey into a detour to see an old house she had visited in her younger years, before she remembers that the house is actually in a different state.

By this point, however, the grandmother's cat has escaped its confinement and attacked Bailey, causing a car accident. While the family tries to determine their next move, they are discovered by the Misfit and his companions — whom the grandmother foolishly identifies aloud, thereby condemning them all to execution at the hands of the convicts.

Dark Humor and Clichéd Thinking: Evans

The first secondary source considered here is Robert C. Evans' essay "Clichés, Superficial Story-Telling, and the Dark Humor of Flannery O'Connor's 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find,'" which focuses on the way the story uses certain linguistic devices to criticize particular kinds of writing and storytelling. According to Evans, "few works of literature better illustrate the effectiveness of dark humor than" "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," because "O'Connor [...] uses her own brand of dark humor to shake her readers awake and keep them alert" (140). Evans sees this use of dark humor to mock and criticize clichés and stale modes of thought most explicitly in the interactions between the grandmother and the barbecue-shack owner Red Sammy, though the phenomenon is visible elsewhere as well:

"The basic point is clear: O'Connor consistently presents characters who speak, think, and act without giving their words, thoughts, or behavior any real or careful consideration, and then she often subverts their empty words and their thoughtless thinking in ways that surprise us, shock us, and often make us laugh, even if her humor is dark and our laughter is often painful" (143).

Although Evans' essay focuses mostly on hackneyed or clichéd expressions and thinking throughout the story, he does consider the grandmother in somewhat more detail than the other characters. He determines from certain textual details that "the grandmother [...] almost sees herself as the heroine of an old-time romance novel rather than as an elderly and somewhat neglected woman from a lower-middle-class Southern family" — a characterization that ultimately explains her carelessness in identifying the Misfit and her increasing hysteria at her inability to manipulate him as she manipulates her son and grandchildren (146). In short, according to Evans, the grandmother's dramatic final scene may be considered the point at which her fantasy finally breaks down, revealing the reality of her situation precisely when it is far too late to do anything about it. However, this does not account for the remaining nuances and ambiguities of the grandmother's final scene opposite the Misfit, and so additional studies must be considered.

Conclusion

After considering each of the aforementioned discussions of Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," it became clear that overall, the story takes a disdainful view of the grandmother and uses the final scene as a means of highlighting her various moral and intellectual failings. In particular, the essays that best helped to answer my initial questions about the story were John Desmond's article "Flannery O'Connor's Misfit and the Mystery of Evil" and Stephen Bandy's essay "'One of My Babies': The Misfit and the Grandmother," because they helped to reveal how the character of the Misfit is used to contrast and highlight the grandmother's ignorance and selfishness.