A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O Connor

The story A Good Man is Hard to Find raises a point on violence and grace, which is emphasized in these three points: the grandmother calls the Misfit her son, where he represents her grace, also the story raises a argument that there is no pleasure on earth, and finally the grandmother accepts her grace but sometimes grace doesn’t respond nicely. The relationship between the Misfit and the grandmother is rather complicated because it is not exactly clear what he is to her. The grandmother mentions this, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!"(O’Conner, 10). This is the one time she says who the Misfit is to her but it doesn’t really make sense because wouldn’t a person know immediately if a person is there child or not. Also the Misfit says, “She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said…” (O’Conner, 10). A man wouldn’t call his mother that so the Misfit must be more than a child to the grandmother.
The grandmother does this, “She reached out and touched him on the shoulder.”(O’Conner, 10). In the previous paragraph it is made clear the Misfit is not her child so she is not just reaching out for the Misfit but for her grace. Even the Misfit says, “She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”(O’Conner, 10). He is mentioning that the woman became good at the end of her life and the Misfit shooting her helped her accept