Penitentiaries Research Paper

Penitentiaries, A problem or Solution: Flanner O’Conner’ “a good man is hard to find”
In “a good man is hard to find” we all see misfit as a bad guy. Who is “a loose from federal pen” (O’Conner 1), kills his father (O’Conner 9), and is a murderer. But during his conversation with the grandmother he says “I never was a bad boy” (0’conner 9). He also mentions “[he] forget what [he] did” (O’Conner 9). After reading the whole story and studying about the Misfit character I argue that federal penitentiaries are a crash course to the darker side. They force the person to become a different person. some survive it without getting change but some become more angry and fearful. Penitentiaries also make
In his unpublished paper Jack and the Monster Factory, Simon Roltson, compares Misfit with the serial killer Carl Panzram, because both claims that their acts of violence were performance of revenge on a society whose rules and courts had brutalized them. Which rendered them violently antisocial. Panzram also claims that the penitentiary has a similar antisocial effect on all the other prisoners (Roltson 2). The Misfit also seems to argue that Jesus should be cursed, because Jesus put the humanity in dilemma by raising the dead. His act of raising the dead “thrown everything off balance.” He compares himself to Jesus because they both were punished. At least Jesus knew what he was being punished for, but Misfit had no idea. So, he thinks he was not treated right. But he finds the rational solution to this that is why he always sign for everything he does and get a copy of it. So, he says “you’ll know what you done and hold up the crime to punishment and see do they match and in the end, you’ll have something to prove you ain’t been treated right” (O’Conner 10). This is his way of “doing right by himself.” Misfit wants to transfer his own felt degradation to grandmother as a means of freedom, that is why he said “no pleasure but meanness.” He also wants to decrease his pain by killing or by mean to others but all this increases it as he mentioned “it’s no real pleasure in life.” So, his act of reducing or get rid of his pain by
When Misfit was in prison, he had this continue thought in this mind that he is not fairly treated. Which changed his definition of good. So, what is bad for other is good for him. Also when he has fired three bullets in the grandmother’s chest, he says she might have been “a good woman… if it had been somebody to shoot her every minute of her life.” (O’Conner 11). Thought, when the grandmother touches him in the end, it was a moment of grace for her, which comes to her through Misfit. The gesture of grandmother and her words to misfit “you are one of my babies” were completely misunderstood by the Misfit and he shot her. By killing her Misfit believes he is killing the most presumption of grandmother that he is any child of her. Because for Misfit being a child means accept anything without questioning it. When grandmother touched her, he thinks that she is trying to be sympathetic to him, but when she says “you are one of my babies” Misfit thinks that she is also talking for the society and telling him to understand everything without question (Hendricks 207). The life in the prison changes his state of mind and how he differentiates between good and bad. It made him a man with no rules, who is free to do whatever he wants, and gave him the right to murder people because he was not