Violence in A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Violence is an inescapable feature of life, And while it is arguable that no good could ever come from it, violence always brings out either the best or worst in people. It strips us bare, naked as the day we’re born and exposes our true nature This is the peculiar premise behind Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. In it, a grandmother and her son’s family encounter an escaped convict, called ‘The Misfit‘, on a road trip in which O’Conner reveals the grandmother’s true character: a sinner pretending to be a saint.

Violence, in its ultimate form, brings out her buried Christian faith, O’Conner depicts her main character as a typical, if not overly fussy, elderly woman. She is constantly nagging on her son, Bailey, and grandchildren, John Wesley and June Star, with ‘You ought to do this’ and ‘Don’t do that’. She is a rather selfish, unpleasant woman, a grandmother.

This is seen in the very first line of the story, “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida”. She didn’t want to go there. She wanted to go to Tennessee and she’ll say, or do anything, to get there That is where The Misfit is first introduced, The grandmother uses the Misfit’s escape from the Federal Pen that she read from a paper as an excuse, saying to Bailey: “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that on the loose in it I couldn’t answer my conscience if I did”.

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This statement reaffirms how self-centered the older woman is, rearranging facts to her advantage. Bailey knows how his mother is apparently because he ignores her and the road trip to Florida commences anyway. At first all goes well. It is a typical family road trip that O’Conner leads us through, embellishing the family dynamic and paying attention to the smallest details. But quite abruptly, things take a turn for the worse, The grandmother has her first violent encounter.

The family has a car accident due to the grandmother startling her cat, Pitty Sing. The car rolls over into a ditch, and while no one is killed or fatally injured, Bailey’s wife breaks her shoulder and is coping with a frightened, crying baby. While this seems like an instance where the grandmother should be concerned for her family’s well-being or helping the young mother, she instead was “*hoping she [herself] was injured”. Even if her guilt was consuming her for being responsible for the incident, it hardly justifies going to such an extreme to avoid conflict with her son. The physical trauma of the accident, in this way, took its toll on the elderly woman. Because it doesn’t seem rational that Bailey would be angry at his mother, considering her age and the circumstances Her poor coping skills are one possible explanation, but O’Conner cuts the scene short for the real horror to come.

The second violent encounter, the crux of the story, is the appearance of The Misfit and his two henchmen, the family’s fate is en route for tragedy the minute an automobile is waved down by the grandmother. No one knows that she has just sealed their fate, in an innocent attempt to help, The Misfit is eager for suitable clothes for himself and his men, but acts the part of a concerned stranger, not looking at all frightening. It is possible that family could‘ve escaped, but the grandmother makes her third mistake when she recognizes The Misfit, The Misfit doesn’t tolerate witnesses. The grandmother, upon realizing what will inevitably happens, cries and shrieks, like a terrified childi She’s regressed in a panic and says the first thing that comes in her head, “You wouldn’t shoot a lady, would you? [w] I know you‘re a good man. You don‘t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from common blood!”.

She tries to persuade him not to kill her. But this presumptuous, familiar tone she is taking with The Misfit doesn’t soften his heart one bit After all, this is the tone she’s taken with every character in the story. Earlier, when stopping at a barbeque diner, the grandmother calls the owner, Red Sammy, a ‘good man’ even though she doesn’t know him at all. And it contradicts her opinion that ‘times have changed‘ and that “People are certainly not nice like they used to be”. Therefore, The Misfit is not fooled by her round about words, In continuation, Bailey and John Wesley are taken into the forest promptly At that moment, “The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim as if she were going into the woods with him [Bailey] but it came off in her hand. She stood staring at it and after a second let it fall to the ground”.

This scene hauntingly illustrates the grandmother’s delayed realization that her son is going to die. She lets her hat fall because her ‘lady-like’ appearance, which she cared so much about before the trip, no longer matters. The material things no longer matter, They are trivial in the face of her son‘s imminent death. She resumes pleading with the killer, repeating words like a broken record. The Misfit retaliates her claims of ‘you’re a good man’ with “Nome. i ain’t a good man but i ain’t the worst in the world either”. He speaks honestly, revealing his childhood and past sins. In exposing himself so, the grandmother forgets herself and notices, “-how thin his shoulder blades were just behind his hat because she was standing up looking down on him”. She takes a moment to think of this man vulnerability, like that of a lost child, rather than her or her families’ peril. Her Christian upbringing is starting to bleed through. However, her son is shot in the nearby woods and all the grandmother can do now is repeat the words ‘pray’ as is they were a prayer in themselves. She claims desperately, “If you would pray, Jesus would help you”.

It is rare instance in which O’Conner refers to her as ‘the old lady‘ instead of ‘the grandmother’. We are taken farther from that selfish grandmother introduced in the inception of the story. Now, she is simply a helpless old woman realizing that all is not black and white, as she had previously believed. When The Misfit has her son’s wife, baby and June Star taken away to be killed next, the grandmother “loses her voice”  and her courage falters. She is falling back into despair, all moral clarity lost. At the second sound of gunshots, the murder of innocent women and children, the grandmother becomes entirely frantic as she knows she is next, “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. I’ll give you all the money I got”. However, her pathetic, disillusioned cries are growing old to The Misfit. When it all becomes too much for the poor elderly woman, the Misfit bitterly preaches to her about the Resurrection, “If He [Jesus] did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw 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 you caniby killing somebody [in] No pleasure but meanness”.

With this dialogue, The Misfit takes the place of a devil, leading the Grandmother to doubt what small faith she has it leads her to question why this psychotic killer knows more about devout Christianity than she. But then, the tides change, as he becomes like a lost child, speaking broken-heartedly, “-ifI had been there I would of known and I wouldn‘t be like I am now“. The regret so evident in the murder’s voice softens the grandmother’s heart, despite the dire circumstances, and unthinkably, she reaches out to him, claiming that he’s “one of my own children!”. This is her moment of grace, where she turns the other cheek, and forgets her selfish human nature However, it comes too late. The Misfit shoots her dead, Such were the violent events that revealed the grandmother’s character. It took the most heinous of crimes, the pinnacle of violence, to make it rise to the surface.

This was the goal of Flannery O’Conner’s story: to break down the grandmother’s character through unexpected violence, through death and despairr In the beginning of the story, the grandmother holds herself as a good and upright womanl But the violent meeting of the Misfit discloses the reality: she is not in the least. It wasn’t until the very end, until she is on the brink of death, that she is honest with the Misfit and tries to do the right thing She could’ve been a good woman, even The Misfit knew that, “-if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (418). Consequently, there wasn’t She took the easy path all her life, avoiding confrontation and Change. Yet, at what price? For even God will not open the door to those who knock late.