Grandmother In Flannery O Connor's A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find follows a peculiar Grandmother as a string of events she is responsible for eventually lead to the death of her loved ones and herself. First and foremost, the grandmother, a manipulative and self-interested lady with no intention of compromising, suggests the family take their vacation through Tennessee rather than Florida, partly in an attempt to avoid a so-called Misfit who appears to be “aloose from the Federal Pen” (3) in Florida. Unfortunately, the Misfit is actually in Tennessee, and thus begins the implausible sequence of events peaking in the murder of the grandmother’s family. Next, the grandmother is aware of her son Bailey’s dislike of her cat, who “didn’t like to arrive at a motel with a cat” (3), and yet
The Misfit begins by shifting his stance slightly on the factuality of Jesus’ actions. Namely, in the past he had been rather cynical about the event, as if without any proof of it existence he was free to do as he pleased. However, he now seems to accept the fact that he was not there to see Jesus raise the dead, but does not dismiss it as impossible: “I wasn’t there so I can’t say He didn’t” (14).
Next, the Misfit comes to a strange realization: he wishes he could have been there, because if he had he “wouldn’t be like [he is] now” (14). It is as if the Misfit is becoming aware of the man he could have been as he speaks, and more importantly, he appears to desire the different life. The realization hits the reader awkwardly, coming across as out of place and unexpected. This sudden emotional response mimics that of the grandmother, who is able to sense the Misfit’s sudden vulnerability and use it to her advantage. At this moment, the grandmother does something unprecedented: she reaches out to the killer and calls him “one of my babies . . . one of my own children”