Rejection of Good

Rejection of Good

Flannery O’Connor considered herself a devout Catholic, and her religious values are evident in all of her writings. She tends to challenge her readers on religious and ethical issues with her work. The end of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” leaves the reader with many unanswered questions like ‘what is good?’ and other things of this nature. It is generally accepted that religion and being good go hand in hand, but as evident in Flannery O’Connor’s story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” this is not true at all. The two main characters, the grandmother and the Misfit, are O’Connor’s tools that she uses to show the reader how portraying oneself as being good is not the same as actually living the lifestyle needed to be a good person. O’Connor also uses foreshadowing to give hints as to what will happen to the family in the later part of the story. She uses foreshadowing to advance the story so that she can apply the foreshadowing to being good in some form or fashion. The plot is another key element in this story to prove how someone’s acts do not influence their own standing with God. O’Connor’s use of setting is also directly related to how the events of the day unfold. She uses the characters, foreshadowing, plot, and setting to demonstrate that everyone is always at the mercy of God no matter if they are perceived as good people by others.

The characters in this story comment on how the day is clear and sunny, but none of the characters can see the sun. For example, the Misfit says, “Ain’t a cloud in the sky… Don’t see no sun but don’t see no cloud neither” (O’Connor 399-400). This line is significant of how God cannot be seen but is always present and constant. The weather makes it seem like nothing bad could happen on this day, but the heat of the day can also make tensions high. The heat could be directly related to the mood in the car and how the Misfit acts. It is possible that at God’s mercy, he makes the weather this way so that he is able to bring his follower back to him.

Throughout the story there are also many hints of foreshadowing. At the beginning the mere fact that grandmother mentions that a serial killer is headed in the same direction that they are hints that their paths will cross. When the family passes a graveyard, for six people, the grandmother mentions that it is an “old family burying ground. That belonged to the plantation” (O’Connor 395). Later, on the way to the old plantation, the family of six in the car will meet their family burial ground on the roadside as well. Another instance of foreshadowing is when the family stops to eat at a restaurant called The Tower. This restaurant is coincidentally located near a town named ‘Toombsboro.’ The beginning of the towns name has the word tombs in it. This symbolizes where the family will end up at the end of the story. All of these events are inevitable because everything is predestined by God.

Another main aspect of the story is the characters. There are two main characters and seven secondary characters. The family makes up most of the secondary characters, and the grandmother and the Misfit are the main characters in this story. The grandmother is representative of good and the Misfit represents evil. The grandmother only takes care of herself, she manipulates people to get what she wants, and she is usually not aware of what is going on around her. The Misfit’s personality contradicts itself. He appears educated but talks with a back country accent, he is polite, but he is also able to kill someone without very much remorse, “The Misfit…shot her three times…” (O’Connor 403). When the grandmother and the Misfit are alone, they have a long conversation about God at the end of the story. At the end of their conversation the grandmother seems to reach a level of salvation and tries to reach out to the Misfit because she feels that she understands the Misfit. At this moment she is in a Christ-like state of mind and she views the Misfit as one of her own children just as God views His followers. The Misfit is not accustom to the gentle caring touch of another person. He immediately, “…sprang back as if a snake had bitten him…” (O’Connor 403), and shot the grandmother without a second thought. The Misfit says that the grandmother was a good woman. The fact that she had returned to God by his plan of using the Misfit as the “deliverer” shows how everyone is at the mercy of God.

Furthermore, the plot of this story is representative of the grandmother’s spiritual life that has gone astray. The grandmother portrays herself as a nice-loving person the way that most church goers are usually viewed. When in reality, she only looks out for her own personal image, and one way that she tries to do this is by taking the cat with her on the trip to Florida. She says that it could not