So I Found a Good Man, but then He Shot Me

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor presents a cast of unlikable characters to build up our hopes of finding “a good man.” The family whose story we follow is everything we wouldn’t want, but would probably expect, in a family. It is the stereotypical “road trip story” family, with characters who cannot get along and bicker incessantly. This story’s stereotypical family is made up of the starry-eyed grandmother, the over-stressed parents, and the hyperactive children. They make for one hell of a road trip.


They do, however, serve a purpose in how much they annoy us as readers. They drive us so crazy that we join the grandmother in her everlasting search for “a good man”. Like the grandmother, we as readers long to find a character to latch onto and relate with, something we cannot do with any member of the family. In this longing, however, we too become blind to the true nature of the characters we meet.


There is another reason, however, that this family makes us more vulnerable to sympathize with the “bad guy” of the story. Every member of the family is a “one-dimensional” character whereas the Misfit has depth and many dimensions to his personality. The father, for example, is only the character we expect him to be. He is annoyed by his mother, impatient with his children, and sharp-tempered, like for example when he yells at the children to shut up in the car. Each member of the family fits perfectly into his or her own stereotype, leaving us yearning for a complex, interesting character whose life and actions surprise us.


So here we are, readers craving a character who not only is “a good man” and we like, but also one that has to break out of his stereotype and be an intriguing presence in the story. Enter the Misfit.


The Misfit first appears when the family is at its most vulnerable. When he and his lackeys first arrive on scene, the Misfit appears to be a kind stranger who fortunately came to the family’s aid after the crash. Surprisingly, the grandmother’s attitude, and even our attitudes, toward the strangers don’t change even when we find out that the kind stranger is actually the Misfit that the grandmother saw on television. The grandmother quickly assumes that the Misfit is just misunderstood and would never hurt her. We as readers hesitate to trust him once we learn his real identity, but we still are inclined to trust him, probably because the grandmother still does. O’Connor portrays the grandmother as a child-like character, sweet and innocent. As anyone who has read The Emperor’s New Clothes knows, children are famous for their ability to perceive the true natures of people. Since the grandmother is so child-like in her own naïve way, we assume that she must be able to see into the soul of the Misfit, beyond his sins and obviously dangerous qualities. However, as the events of the story continue to unfold, this hope for “a good man” fades and can no longer keep us attached to the Misfit.


When it becomes obvious that the Misfit is not actually “a good man” and does actually mean to kill the family, we as readers can no longer so readily accept the grandmother’s hope and faith, but we can still hold on to the idea that the Misfit could be the complex character we’ve been looking for. The Misfit is not your average, everyday “let’s rob and kill them ‘cause we can” kind of criminal. As he starts talking about his past, that fact becomes clear. While talking to the grandmother, he acknowledges that his parents were the “finest people in the world” (90). This conversation is the first sign that the Misfit does not fit his respective stereotype as the other characters do. Next, he tells the grandmother about his first arrest and how he was thrown in jail for killing his father (who actually died from the flu). He is the first character whose past is revealed, which gives him yet another dimension more than the other characters.


After Bobby Lee returns with Bailey’s shirt, our hopes are nearly completely gone that the Misfit will turn out to be the good man we’ve all been waiting for. Our perceptiveness, however, is still clouded when the Misfit and the grandmother start to talk about religion and punishment. The Misfit confesses that the reason he kills people is he “can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment” (130). We also gain insight into his cynical religious convictions when he says, “If [Jesus] didn’t [raise the dead] then it’s nothing for you 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” (135). His complexities and depth are so clear and so attractive because we see his potential for good and again start to hope that, even though he has killed people, he can still undergo a change of heart and redeem himself as a character. These hopes seem realized as the Misfit’s rough exterior starts to crack and he nearly begins to cry. The grandmother goes to far, however, by touching his shoulder and waking him up from his trance-like state where his true nature was being revealed.


So our hopes get shot down along with the grandmother, as gruesome as that sounds. O’Connor sets us up to long for “a good man”, running a parallel course with the grandmother into the hands of the very person we are told to fear from the first paragraph. We are fooled, however, by his complex nature and atypical past into thinking that he may actually be the character we have been looking for all along. But as the story ends, we are ruined in exactly the same way as the grandmother, by thinking we could trust a man who may just be that “good man” that is so hard to find. (1,011)

Updated: Add the word count