A Good Man is Hard to Find by Mary Flannery O' Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor short story "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" is representative of O'Connor's concern for the priorities and values of her time. On the day of their trip the grandmother tells her family she had read about The Misfit; a crazed killer in the newspaper who is on the run heading for Florida. The family ignores her and they go on their trip. The parents and the children pay little attention to the grandmother and when they do, they are rude. The unruly children are an example of the breakdown of discipline and respecting your elders; forecasts the future generations.

A religious factor between good and evil comes through the story between the grandmother and The Misfit. The Misfit represents total evil. He at one point of the story believes himself to be Christ-like, in that he and the grandmother were being punished for crimes they did not commit. The Misfit tells her Christ accepted death for the sins of all people and not only did The Misfit not do that, he had killed other innocent people. The grandmother upon observing her family's great ordeal realizes that she is going to have to forgive the Misfit and accept him as a child of God if she wants to be truly Christ-like.

The reader will see definite signs that foretell the grotesque outcome of the grandmother's family by The Misfits hands. The first is the grandmother elaborately dressing for the daytrip in case of an accident anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady. It is the grandmother's fault for changing the family's direction to see a house ending up at a dirt road where the family meets their fate. Another form of foreshadowing is when The Misfit confesses to everything he has done before finally killing the grandmother. Another image is when the family passes by a cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of a graveyard that is like a small island. The number of graves match the number of people in the grandmother's family. It is the number of graves that sets up the horrible ending.

Toward the end the grandmother tries unsuccessfully to redeem the unredeemable Misfit and asks him what he did to get sent to the penitentiary that first time. The Misfits answer shows the inevitable fate of the family when The Misfit says "Turn to right it was a wall, turn to the left it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was a floor." He describes a jail cell and the grave where the grandmother and the rest of the family meet their end.