Who Sees the Good in Humanity? Certainly Not Flannery O'Connor

          

A depiction of the final scene of "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

              Flannery O’Connor writes about a gentlemanly murderer in her story “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” I think that the killers’ attempt at a civilized version of the act of murder is used to emphasize the irony of the title. The title “A Good Man is Hard to Find” causes me to wonder what makes a good man. I began to think about “The Misfit” compared to Bailey. Bailey is often harsh toward his mother, and after the car accident, the grandmother is “curled up under the dashboard, hoping she [is] injured so that Bailey’s wrath [will] not come down on her all at once” (O’Connor 125). So when The Misfit speaks to the grandmother and tells Hiram to “hep that lady” out of the ditch, his actions right before he and his companions murder the entire family seem almost gentlemanly compared to Bailey’s actions (O’Connor 131). The Misfit’s seemingly odd and uncharacteristic actions (for an escaped convict) cause the reader to wonder what constitutes a good man.

                It also seems important to note that The Misfit was not planning to murder the family until the grandmother recognized him as The Misfit. This may seem a small detail, but if The Misfit was not originally planning to murder the family, then why would he stop on the road after the family crashed? I think that The Misfit was going to help the family. By stopping to help the family, The Misfit displays the qualities of a good Samaritan. The character who possibly killed his own father and eventually killed a helpless old woman stops to help a family who crashed their car. Since I read “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” I have been stuck on the idea that The Misfit was actually planning to help before he was identified.

                Douglas Novich Leonard, author of the article “Experiencing Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find,'” stated that Flannery O’Connor’s goal in her writing is to show that “all humans are morally grotesque” (Leonard 1). If O’Connor wants to show the painfully grotesque aspects of humanity, it seems odd that she portrays some of The Misfit’s actions as kind and gentle. It occurred to me though that perhaps O’Connor is attempting to convince her readers of this moral grotesqueness by writing about a character who may at first seem kind. O’Connor shows the good in The Misfit just before unmasking the horrible reality of the murderous man. O’Connor needs to show the side of The Misfit that could be perceived as kind in order to crush her readers’ hopes that The Misfit is ultimately a moral person. It seems that in “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor laughs at readers who wish to see the good in humanity. The children are clearly spoiled, Bailey is harsh and uncaring toward his mother, and the grandmother is manipulative. The characters in the story are not what I would consider good people. In the story, in an attempt to convince him not to kill her, the grandmother tells The Misfit that he is “a good man at heart,” (O’Connor 128). And just like the grandmother in that moment, I wished to find the good in the characters, but Flannery O’Connor makes her point when The Misfit murders the entire family. Humanity is sinful, and if you think otherwise, you’re ignoring the cruelty and violence hidden just beneath the surface.

Sources:

Leonard, Douglas Novich. “Experiencing Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man Is Hard To Find.’”         Interpretations, vol. 14, no. 2, 1983, p. 1. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23241513. Accessed 29             Jan. 2021.