Branum1

Kiley Branum

Mrs.Schenck

English 11

Period 5

11 January 2022

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

A Good Man Is Hard To Find By Flannery O’Connor, is a southern-gothic short story with a plot

twist at the end. This story is about a family of 6 in the late 40’s taking a road trip to Florida from

Georgia, looking for new adventure, the grandma convinces the family to go to this old mill she used to

visit as a child, when on the way there the family gets into a car accident, they get ambushed by a man

who calls himself the misfit along with his buddies. The dark ending of this story concludes by taking out

the family members to the woods and shooting them, and the misfit killing the grandmother. O’connor

uses archetypes outlaw and ruler, the characteristics of selfishness being displayed by the grandmother

throughout the story.

The main character being focused on throughout the story is the grandmother, she portrays the

archetype of the ruler. She tends to try to take charge the most during their road trip and took it into her

own hands to sneak her cat in her basket. “She had her big black valise that looked like the head of a

hippopotamus in one corner, and underneath it she was hiding a basket with Pitty Sing, the cat, in it”.

Knowing the family didn't want her to bring the cat she brought it anyways which caused the car accident

they had gotten in.The grandmother shows repeated patterns of being selfish, manipulative and very

unaware of her actions. Once the family had been ambushed and she saw the misfit had a gun she said

“You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" disregarding the other family members being in any sort of

danger. The grandma is also seen using undertones of racism in the story which exemplifies irony because

she was an extreme catholic and it contradicts the idea of her being “non-judgemental” and treating
 Branum2

everyone like children of God. They used the grandmother to exemplify a negative ruler who wants to be

in control and only cares about themselves which contributes to her idea of the story that the

grandmother's selfishness is what got this family into deep trouble.

One of the other characters in the story is the misfit, who portrays the outlaw, the misfit comes

into the story towards the end after the family got into a car accident and is sitting in a ditch. The misfit's

purpose in the story is to give the grandma a humbling grace. He and the grandma are opposites in some

ways, he is self aware about his actions unlike her. He knows he is a bad man but he also knows there are

people that are more bad than he is. Nome, I ain't a good man," The Misfit said after a second as if he had

considered her statement carefully, "but I ain't the worst in the world neither.”. The Grandma is trying to

convince the misfit that he is not a bad boy in hopes nothing bad will happen to her. At the end when the

misfit shot the grandmother he said “She would have been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had

been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” The misfit seems to have revealed to himself

that he knew despite her religious talks and using the “would you shoot a lady” as an excuse, she was not

a good person. He was able to tell she had a lack of compassion which is what got her family eventually

murdered.

It is shown that O’Connors main purpose in her short story was to use these two character

archetypes, the outlaw and the ruler to show the opposites between both. The story provides the valuable

lesson that nothing good comes from being selfish and the importance of understanding gratitude and

actually looking out for your family.