English Journal

Throughout the course of normal life, there comes a time when all hope is lost, all meaning is shattered, and the only relief is to go through a small change, ultimately becoming a different person, with a different personality and different motivations. In the case of Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the Grandmother finds herself in a murderous situation and suddenly, she is an entirely knew woman. One of the characters puts it quite well when he remarks, “‘She would have been a good woman,’ The Misfit said, ‘if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life’” (O’Connor 442). While this is a rather unorthodox saying, it is both true for the Grandmother and for many Americans today. Everyone goes through a time in their life that is less than they want for themselves; everyone changes who they are if the opportunity suites it.

When the Grandmother is first introduced, she is a rather rash woman; she has no problem lying to her family about several different things throughout the story, and she blatantly lies to her grandchildren in front of their parents. “‘There was a secret panel in the house,’ she said craftily, not telling the truth…” (435). She also fails to tell the parents when she realizes she made a mistake that would ultimately lead to all their deaths. “The horrible thought she had had before the accident was that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (436). When the rest of her family is killed and she is the last one alive, she

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becomes a nice, gentle, supportive person; a complete turnaround from her short tempered and dishonest display during the time when there was nothing wrong.

Too often people will go about their business with no care for anyone but themselves, until it is in their interest to be a “good” person. Some people will lie and cheat and steal with no care for what ramifications come about due to their ignorance and indecency. However, when an opportunity comes along, their entire attitude changes- as long as there is something in it for them. A prime example is the head executives of nearly every large scale business in the United States