In Flannery O’Connor’s best-known short story, “It’s Hard to Find a Good Man,” the problem of good and evil is linked to faith, religion, an act of mercy, and, of course, to the problems and “remnants” of the Old South. It seems that the answer to the question of who is “a good person” and who is “evil” seems obvious. The Misfit recognizes himself as a sinful person, says that “it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can – by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness “(O’Connor, p. 16). The Grandmother, on the other hand, seems kind and religious. In addition, the woman is confident that she is a real lady. This is noticeable not only in her words but even in her appearance, about which the author writes with irony: “… navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdies trimmed with lace and at her neckline, she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (O’Connor, p.4).
The heroine of the story tries to follow moral standards and be “good.” She teaches rude, spoiled children that adults need to be respected, and shows them the surroundings, trying to instill a love for their native places, about which they speak so unflatteringly. However, the work’s ambiguous ending shows that the answers to the questions about whether the Grandmother is a “good” person and what it generally means to be kind in understanding the characters of the story are not so obvious.
The author creates situations that subject her characters to a critical test, putting them in the face of a particular higher spiritual reality, which they overlooked in the petty vanity of the everyday world. This moment of truth lies beyond the limits of ordinary perception, but when it comes, a person opens his own insignificance, and at the same time, the path to grace and mercy. Many critics support the idea that the last words of the Grandmother and her desire to accept the criminal, the murderer as her son, testify to the onset of such a “moment of truth” in which the Grandmother repents of her unrighteous life and is transformed into a good person. This theory is followed, for example, by John Desmond in his article “Flannery O’Connor’s misfit and the mystery of evil” (Desmond). He notes that, according to the writer’s Catholic faith, no one can be called entirely evil (except Satan) or completely good. Moreover, evil always appears to be good in the eyes of the one who commits it, i.e., appears as something that can benefit him. It is no coincidence that The Misfit says, explaining his behavior, that there is no pleasure in the world except cruelty.
On the other hand, The Misfit is the only character in the story who seriously thinks about the secrets of good and evil, who acutely feels the problem of the world, where a person’s suffering is disproportionate to his actions, where faith in the resurrection of Christ destroys the rational laws based on which The Misfit strive to build his life. As Bonney argues, “although he is a murderer, the Misfit is the only character […] with any sense of what it means to ask morally serious questions about the human experience, and this quality makes him remotely connotative of the eternal misfit, Christ “(p. 347).
Grandmother, on the other hand, is sure that she accurately distinguishes good from evil. For her, kindness is directly related to the norms and values of the patriarchal South, with religion, manners, upbringing, and a good pedigree, respect for her native land and the people around her. As Farrell O’Gorman observes, the Grandmother praises her own vision of the Old South by talking about modern decline and degradation, but at the same time ignoring many issues and not thinking that it could be the fault of southerners like her (O’Gorman, p. 181). For example, seeing a beggar on the threshold of Negro shacks, which does not even have pants, Granny says: «Little niggers in the country do not have things like we do. If I could paint, I’d paint that picture “(O’Connor, p. 5). The same attitude toward class inequality creeps in when she talks about her late husband, whom she married because “he was a gentleman and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man “(O’Connor, p.6). She completely does not notice the contradictions in her words, linking her husband’s noble qualities and financial situation. The Grandmother attaches great importance to her social status and money, so at the end of the story, she even puts them on a par with religion, begging the Misfit not to kill her: “Jesus! ” the old lady cried. “You’ve got good blood! I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady. I’ll give you all the money I’ve got !” (O’Connor, p. 15). In this phrase, all those components of goodness that Grandmother believes in are manifested: religion, good pedigree, upbringing, and financial situation.
Another quality of the Grandmother that does not allow us to call her a “good person” is her ability to manipulate and lie. As the critic William Bonney noted, Grandmother is a good person only on the surface (Bonney). She tricks the family into obeying her, which ultimately ends in tragedy. There is an opinion, according to enlightenment or God’s grace did not descend on the Grandmother, but she was simply trying to save her life, so her attempt to accept The Misfit as her own son has nothing to do with piety and piety (Hooten). Other critics note that the Grandmother’s behavior at the last second of her life does not correlate in any way with her vain character, which means that the heroine’s act of mercy is a lie, fully correlated with her true nature (Bandy).
It can also be assumed that the Grandmother was simply distraught with fear and, perhaps, seeing her son’s shirt on the Misfit, mistook the culprit for her child. True, the writer herself, being a convinced Catholic, most likely put an unambiguous meaning in the ending of the story; that is, she considered the Grandmother’s act as a manifestation of God’s grace (Hooten). At first, The Misfit said that there is no other pleasure in life but cruelty, but immediately after the murder, he admits that there is no absolute pleasure in life at all. This last remark of the hero shows that a cruel act that could please him turned out to be untenable and did not bring him closer to understanding the meaning of life or the nature of good and evil. Perhaps, in the future, the realization of the hero’s inner discord contributes to the destruction of the identity “The Misfit” invented by him, which will lead to his transformation and reveal in him the highest form of good.
Works Cited
Bandy, Stephen C. “” One of my babies”: the misfit and the Grandmother.” Studies in Short Fiction 33 (1996): 107-118.
Bonney, William. “The Moral Structure of Flannery O’Connor’s” A Good Man Is Hard to Find”.” Studies in short fiction 27.3 (1990): 347.
Desmond, John. “Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit and the Mystery of Evil.” Renascence 56.2 (2004): 129-137.
Hooten, Jessica. “Individualism in O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find.” The Explicator 66.4 (2008): 197-200.
O’Gorman, Farrell. Peculiar Crossroads: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, and Catholic Vision in Postwar Southern Fiction. LSU Press, 2004.