“A Good Man is Hard to Find” is one of the most Flannery O’Connor famous short stories that show the role of sin in distorting one’s true identity.
In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a family decides to go on a vacation to Florida. At first, the grandmother does not want to go there but instead wants to visit some friends in Tennessee as she heard that there’s a dangerous criminal named the Misfit. Later on, after deciding the destination she tries to convince her son Bailey to take a different route. But not even halfway through the route, the family got into a car accident and the family waits for help to come along.
For instance, it turns out that their “help” was none other than the Misfit and two of his buddies. Unfortunately the whole family, excluding the grandma, is taken into the forest by the Misfit’s friends and killed. At this moment, the grandmother who is very mean throughout the story in terms of her maternal feelings finally becomes a mother and gushes not only with love but also with affection to a stranger who actually murders her family. The final moment of her life is obviously transformational and reflects the irony portrayed in the story.
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In fact, the true trip takes place within the life of the family. One issue that arises in the story is: what is a good man’s definition? and how few are left. Nobody is actually a hero and everybody is bad somehow. Many of the story’s protagonists believe they are good people based on their mindset and life view. However, these moral codes are profoundly flawed, nobody changes or grows, they’re all disconnected, argumentative, fractious, and insulting each other.
The grandmother who is quite judgmental and pretty superficial is the focal character that we see the story mostly through her eyes. Although all the interesting and entertaining things that she says we don’t like her much either because she thinks that just being a lady can prevent anything to happen to her and even stops the Misfit from killing her. She is so committed to her selfish and manipulative ways, convinces herself and her family, that she is a good judge on any matter of human nature.
The grandmother recognizes that she has the best value system. Wearing a “navy straw hat and collars and cuffs, she overdresses entirely for the journey, so individuals would know she was a woman if there was an accident” (368). This obviously shows how she sees all others down. She calls a little black boy “a nice pickaninny” (368) in the same sentence in which she criticizes John Wesley about the state. She later says little black kids don’t have things like that and that “if she could paint, she would paint that picture” (368)
