A Good Man Is Hard to Find.
Fiction Essay Nobel Prize winner William Faulkner said that a writer must “leave no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking with any story is ephemeral and doomed- love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. ” Flannery O’Connor uses these universal truths in her short story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. An old southern woman trying to come to terms with the new culture of the south dooms her family by unknowingly leading them to come face to face with a notorious criminal called “The Misfit”.
O’Connor pushes her characters to the edge using violence so that they may find grace. In the story, there is a human versus human conflict. The grandmother constantly compares her two grandchildren with the way things used to be in her time. The grandmother says, “In my time, children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. ” (O’Connor 119). The grandchildren are terribly rude and are always speaking everything that is on their minds without a filter. There is also a human versus environment/society conflict.
The grandmother comes from a time where slavery still existed, or, the Old South. She was brought up differently than her grandchildren who represent the New South. Viewing the relationship between the grandmother and the grandchildren, it appears that the cultures of the Old South and New South are polar opposites. This brand new generation has different values due to the changes that were happening in history. Within this story there is another human versus human conflict between the family and the Misfit.
When the grandmother recognizes The Misfit and shouts it out, she instantly dooms her family. As The Misfit orders the father and son to be killed first the grandmother tries to reason with him in order to spare her life. Desperately she says, “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people! ” (O’Connor 127). Surprisingly enough, the grandmother does not seem to be interested in saving the family from this impending doom. She is only interested in saving herself and that is her motivation for trying to reason ith The Misfit. Only during the last moments of her life does she begin to shout out for her son. The story ends tragically because the whole family is murdered. The grandmother realized that her generation was the reason why The Misfit existed calling him “one of my own children” (O’Connor 132). This goes back to the culture of the Old South, which bred the next generation of the New South. The grandmother realizes that the reason why this new culture is so different is because the Old South created it, old southern values were no longer respected.
When The Misfit shoots the grandmother she “half sat and half lay in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child’s and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky. ” (O’Connor 132). In these moments after her death O’Connor gave her grace. Even though she has been brutally murdered she has been given this peace as she looks up into the sky. In this story, Flannery O’Connor pushed her characters to the edge by using extreme violence. In “A Reasonable Use of the Unreasonable,” O’Connor explains her reasons for doing this.
O’Connor writes, “I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. ” (O’Connor 1048). The grandmother’s violent murder gave her grace and clarity. O’Connor also shows us that there are humans that fear only for themselves and not others and that sometimes tragedy happens even though it is not fair. But another thing O’Connor shows us is that just like how tragedy happens, grace is also given to those who do not deserve it.
