A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Synopsis

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" In Flannery O 'Connor 's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," O 'Connor uses a gruesome and violent situation to reveal the true nature of her characters. In some cases, the natures of her characters are duplicitous to their initial descriptions in the first half of the story and in others, they stray very little from what is understood of them in the beginning. It can be argued that "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is duplicitous in its own right, beginning with a comical look at a manipulative, meddling grandmother and her family on what at first seems like a light-hearted story of a family road trip but that transitions into a horrific and deadly last scene (Stephens 360). At any rate, the Grandmother, Bailey and his wife, and even the Misfit are not thoroughly characterized until confronted with the last violent situation of the story. As O 'Connor has stated before, "It is the extreme situation that best reveals what we are essentially" ("On Her Own Work" 340), and it is an extreme situation that in the end reveals the true depth, or lack thereof, in each of her characters. In the first half of the story, O 'Connor uses verisimilitude in her characterization of Grandmother. Like many stereotypical grandmothers, she is talkative, proper, and often reminiscent of better times…"In my time…children were more respectful…People did right then" (O 'Connor 600). When it comes to women, she values all things feminine. In a sentence following the description of her dainty clothing worn for the road trip that not only characterizes Grandmothers ' views on women but also foreshadows events to come, it is mentioned that "In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady." (O 'Connor 599). She is quick to correct not only her spoiled, rambunctious grandchildren but also the parenting of her son Bailey and his wife. Through an act of attempted manipulation and also more foreshadowing, she tells Bailey of traveling to Florida that she wouldn 't take her children in any direction with a criminal like the Misfit on the loose and that she could not answer her conscience for it (O 'Connor 599). In all early incidences Grandmother, though often annoying and sometimes selfish, is not far from what the reader may know of their own grandmothers. It is through this use of realism in her initial description that the reader most identifies with her (Stephens 359). After the family 's accident and the turning point of the story, true to her character, it is the Grandmother who makes the blustering comment that she recognizes one of the men that confronts the family after their crash as the Misfit. Right away, she becomes as lady-like as ever as she asks the Misfit as she cries, "You wouldn 't shoot a lady, would you?" (O 'Connor 604) and she continuously explains to the Misfit how he must be "a good man at heart" (O 'Connor 605). While her intentions may be unclear (whether she was trying to save her own life, the soul of the Misfit, or both) she continuously urged the Misfit to "pray, pray, pray, pray" (O 'Connor 606). This urging by Grandmother for the Misfit to pray parallels with O 'Connor 's deeply religious Southern roots infused into many of her stories (Drake 347). As is the nature of many grandmothers to make people feel special and wanted, that 's how Grandmother spent her very last moment, telling the Misfit that he was one of her "babies," one of her "children" (O 'Connor 607) and reaching for him. In the face of such a dangerous situation, although partially her own fault, Grandmother remains ladylike and as poised as can be expected as her character fluctuates very little, remaining consistent with the qualities she was first introduced with, if not more likable and less troublesome. Certainly Grandmother identifies with the second of the two kinds of people her close friend Merton identifies her with writing about:
"the rural kind: furious, slow, cunning, inexhaustible, living sweetly on the verge of the unbelievable, more inclined to prefer the abyss to solid ground, but keeping contact with the world of contempt by raw insensate poetry and religious mirth" (Merton 341). If Grandmother identifies with the second of the two kinds of people Merton refers to regarding O 'Connor 's writings, Bailey and the mother more closely parallel the first: "exhausted… still driving on in ill will, or scientifically expert in nastiness" (Merton 341). Bailey and the mother are portrayed in the first half of the story as two rude people who continuously ignore Grandmother and let their children do as they please. They seem to have no interaction with each other, Grandmother, or their own children. As the story begins, Grandmother is trying to convince her son Bailey that the family should avoid Florida as this is where the dangerous criminal on the loose is hiding. After he ignores her, she does her best to convince the mother that they should stay away from Florida, but she, too, ignores Grandmother completely, and it is here that Bailey and his wife are first introduced to the reader, coldly ignoring Grandmother and going about their business, Bailey reading the sports page and the mother feeding the baby (O 'Connor 599). Little is said about Bailey or the mother until the family stops for sandwiches and the mother plays a song that prompts Grandmother to ask Bailey to dance. After not even answering her, but only "glaring", it is said of Bailey that "He didn 't have a naturally sunny disposition" like Grandmother did and that "trips made him nervous" (O 'Connor 601). After a great deal of trying to convince him to take the family to see the house with the secret panel, Bailey snaps yelling at the family to "shut up" and finally angrily bargaining that if they stopped at the house, it would be the only place they stopped (O 'Connor 602). After the car accident, however, is the first time Bailey is portrayed as possessing any feelings for his family as the first thing he does is get out of the car searching for the children 's mother. After Grandmother made the mistake of loudly identifying one of the men as the Misfit, Bailey is described as saying "something to his mother that shocked even the children," causing not only Grandmother to cry but ironically the Misfit himself to be embarrassed (O 'Connor 604). Soon Bailey is yelling at everyone again to "Hush!" and "shut up" and let him "handle this" (O 'Connor 605). This is the last Bailey is actually heard from before being taken into the woods to be shot. Soon, the mother is asking where Bailey and her son have been taken as she shows her first signs of actually caring for her husband and child. Touchingly, when asked if she would like to join her husband and son, she agrees, undeniably knowing the fate that awaited her in the woods. It is only after such terrifying circumstances that both Bailey and the mother give only the slightest signs of humanity or of caring for their family. Prior to, they had no interaction or tolerance for each other. Still, very little is learned of Bailey and the mother. "Nothing of particular significance is brought forth" (Stephens 361). Perhaps this lack of significance is accurate to their mundane, cold personalities.
Although it is never expressly mentioned what the Misfit 's crimes were in the first half of the story, it is implied through the Grandmother that they were brutal and that the Misfit was, in deed, a cruel and bad man. After the family 's accident, however, and the Misfit 's first encounter with the family, it is understood that the Misfit only intended to help the unfortunate family. That is, until Grandmother identified him and he replied by telling her that it would have been better for all of them if she had not recognized him (O 'Connor 604). Surprisingly, throughout the ordeal, the Misfit remained calm and polite, bordering on apologetic- nothing like what Grandmother or the reader would have expected. To Grandmothers ' suggestions for him to pray, he rationally explained why he thought Jesus had "thrown everything off balance" (O 'Connor 607). Even O 'Connor did not want the Misfit to "equate with the devil," ("On Her Own Work" 340) however, and so the Misfit rather than snapping at Grandmother 's encouraging to pray, rationally explains his reasons for not wanting to. Except for the mere pulling of the trigger that ended Grandmother 's life, he never became enraged or even violent. He was even surprised and embarrassed at Bailey 's harsh comment to Grandmother after she identified the Misfit. Although he is the cause for such violence against the family, ironically, it is the Misfit in the end, who recognizes the fact that shear terror is capable of bringing out the true character in a person as he says of Grandmother, "She would have been a good woman…if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life" (O 'Connor 608).
It is likely more than her "interest in the grotesque" (Votteler, 333) that prompts O 'Connor to use such a shocking scene. "Violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality…Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work," O 'Connor said. "It is the extreme situation that best reveals what we are essentially" ("On Her Own Work" 340). In the case of her characters, Grandmother proves gracious, speaking to the Misfit of her Jesus and ironically becoming more accepting of the Misfit upon his threatening of her life than at any other moment. Bailey and mother, however, while showing some signs of love for each other and their children, show no real signs of personal growth, nor do they ever really surprise the reader by their responses to the danger at hand. Perhaps the most misunderstood character is the Misfit who is as polite if not more polite toward the members of the family then they ever were with each other. This is in sharp contrast to the cold killer Grandmother read and spoke about in the first half. Neither his words nor his actions coincide with the wickedness that usually accompanies a man who has committed crimes as ruthless as his. Although he is the one responsible for the violent situation, he actually remains a poised gentleman. Some may even walk away from the story with the greatest amount of sympathy directed toward the Misfit. It is for this reason that many may share O 'Connor 's view, that she wished to think of the Grandmother not dying merely out of the senselessness of the Misfit, but that she may have planted "a mustard seed" within the "Misfit 's heart" that will be "enough to pain him there to turn him into the prophet he was meant to be" ("On Her Own Work" 340). Both characters, although each villainized to a point are likely the most likable of O 'Connor 's characters whose real character in the face of danger fail to disappoint the reader.

Works Cited
Drake, Robert. "Flannery O 'Connor: A Critical Essay": 48. Rpt. in Short Story
Criticism. Ed. Thomas Votteler. Vol. 1 Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1990. 347-348.
21 vols.

Merton, Thomas. "Flannery O 'Connor: A Prose Elegy": 68-71. Rpt. in Short Story
Criticism. Ed. Melvin J. Friedman and Beverly Lyon Clark. Vol. 1 Detroit: Gale
Research Company, 1990. 340-341. 21 vols.

O 'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man Is Hard To Find." Rpt. In Roberts, Edgar V. and
Henry E. Jacobs. Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. 8th ed., 2004.
598-608.

"On Her Own Work." Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose(1969): 107-118. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism, Ed. Laurie L. Harris and Sheila Fitzgerald. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale
Research Company, 1988. 339-340. 21 vols.

Stephens, Martha. "The Question of Flannery O 'Connor (1973)": 205. Rpt. in Short Story
Criticism. Ed. Laurie L. Harris and Sheila Fitzgerald. Vol. 1 Detroit: Gale Research
Company, 1988. 359-363. 21 vols.

Votteler, Thomas. "(Mary) Flannery O 'Connor 1925-1964": 333-334. Rpt. in Short Story
Criticism. Vol. 1 Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1990. 21 vols.

Cited: Criticism. Ed. Melvin J. Friedman and Beverly Lyon Clark. Vol. 1 Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1990 "On Her Own Work." Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose(1969): 107-118. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism, Ed. Laurie L. Harris and Sheila Fitzgerald. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1988 Stephens, Martha. "The Question of Flannery O 'Connor (1973)": 205. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism Company, 1988. 359-363. 21 vols.