A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor tells of a
wrong turn on the
road that brings fatal consequences to the car’s occupants. Bailey and his
family – his wife, their children John Wesley and June Star and the baby, and the children’s grandmother – are on their way to
visit Florida. The grandmother who had wanted to go to east Tennessee brings the cat secretly with her on her valise. She had tried to dissuade her son from going to Florida, warning him about an escaped convict who calls himself The Misfit. In the afternoon, the grandmother suddenly remembers a house she once visited as a young lady and she wants to see it again. Knowing Bailey would not want to take a side trip, she makes up stories about the house – claiming it has secret panels in it where treasures are hidden – exciting the curiosity of the children until Bailey gives in to their demands. They make the turn which the grandmother thought would lead to the house, but she is startled by the realization she had it wrong – the house was in another state – and upsets her valise where she has hidden the cat. The animal springs onto Bailey who loses control of the car: it is thrown off the road into a gulch. No one is seriously hurt, but as they struggle to their feet, three men in a car arrive, one of whom is The Misfit. The grandmother recognizes him and blurts it out – a fatal mistake. The Misfit sends Bailey and John Wesley with his two henchmen to the woods where they are shot. Bailey’s wife and the other two kids are also taken there and killed. Frantically, the grandmother tries to gain The Misfit’s sympathy by telling him he is a good man at heart, but she only succeeds in railing him. He shoots her when she touches him on the shoulder. The
story takes its title from Red Sammy’s remark when they stop at The Tower for lunch. The grandmother makes a frenzied attempt to awaken The Misfit’s good or humane side, calling him good, asking him to pray, to no avail.
This story is replete with ironies: the grandmother’s description of the day being perfect for riding, her admonition to Bailey that she wouldn’t take her children to any
place where there is danger,the grandmother’s dressing up for the journey so that in case of an accident, people would know she was a lady, and her insistent remark that The Misfit is a good man. It is also full of “what ifs” : what if Bailey had not listened to his mother, or the cat had not been brought with them, or the grandmother never read the papers and recognized The Misfit, or the thought of the old house never occurred to the old woman? It arouses doubts in one’s mind whether a Being really cares, or whether He exists, after all.
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