a good man is hard to find summary essay

A Summary and Analysis of Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ is one of the best-known short stories by Flannery O’Connor (1925-64), who produced a string of powerful stories during her short life. First published in the collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find in 1955, the story is about an American family who run into an escaped murderer at a plantation.

Before we offer an analysis of some of the key details of the story, here’s a brief summary of its plot.

Plot summary

The story is about a grandmother, her son named Bailey, Bailey’s wife, and the couple’s three children, named June Star, John Wesley, and simply ‘the baby’. The family are going on holiday to Florida. At the beginning of the story, the grandmother points out to her son that a notorious criminal, known as the Misfit, is on the loose and she doesn’t think they should be going on vacation to Florida when the Misfit is rumoured to be heading there.

On their way to their destination, the grandmother tells the children a story of how she was courted by a wealthy man who used to leave her a watermelon every day with his initials, E. A. T., inscribed in it. However, one day a black boy saw the word ‘EAT’ on the watermelon and ate it. This story amuses the children.

The family then stop off for lunch a barbecue diner, The Tower, run by a man named Red Sammy, who talks to the grandmother about the Misfit. It is Red Sammy who remarks, ‘A good man is hard to find’, in reference to the dangerous convict on the loose.

When the family get back on the road, the grandmother persuades her son to take a detour to a plantation she remembers from her youth. She embellishes the story by inventing details, such as the idea that a secret panel concealed the family silver in the house.

However, she has misremembered where the plantation is: Tennessee, rather than Georgia (where the family are). When the grandmother’s cat escapes from his basket and frightens Bailey, he crashes the car into a ditch.

Another car approaches them. It contains three men, one of whom the grandmother recognises as the notorious Misfit. He seems familiar to her, as though she has known him for years.

When she blurts out that she recognises him, the Misfit tells them that it would have been better if she hadn’t recognised him. He talks to the grandmother while his two accomplices lead Bailey into the woods and shoot him. They then do the same with Bailey’s wife and the children. The grandmother tries to flatter the Misfit into sparing her life, telling him that she knows he’s a good man, but to no avail.

The story ends with the grandmother addressing the Misfit as one of her own ‘babies’ or ‘children’; the Misfit shoots her dead. The Misfit has the final word, observing that the grandmother would have been a good woman if she had had someone there ‘to shoot her every minute of her life.’

The character of the grandmother is central to the dramatic power of ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’. The first two words of the story are ‘The grandmother’; the story begins with her warning her son about the escaped Misfit and ends with her being shot dead by the Misfit; the story opens with the third-person narrator’s reference to Bailey as the grandmother’s ‘only boy’ but ends with her addressing the Misfit as one of her ‘own children’.

And although ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ is narrated by an impersonal third-person narrator, in terms of the story’s focalisation we remain close to the grandmother’s perspective on events, seeing things through her eyes and gaining access to her thoughts and feelings as the story approaches its shocking and dramatic climax.

The skill of O’Connor’s writing lies in her ability to shuttle rapidly between comedic moments poking gentle fun at the grandmother and darker plot developments. The point is not that the shift between these two very different modes seems awkward or out of place, but that O’Connor lends the already shocking moments at the end of the story an even more alarming element, through juxtaposing them with lighter comic interludes.

A central theme of O’Connor’s story is, as the title makes clear, goodness: note how the grandmother and Red Sammy’s repeated references to a ‘good man’ meet their match in the Misfit’s statement at the end of the story that the grandmother would have been a ‘good woman’ if someone had been there to (threaten to) shoot her at all times.

This statement of the Misfit’s also highlights another theme O’Connor is exploring: that of crime and punishment. The Misfit tells the grandmother that the punishments he has undergone don’t match with the crimes he has committed. But the story contains a religious angle, too, as exemplified by the grandmother’s epiphany at the end of the story, in which – when confronted with her own imminent death – she reaches out and acknowledges her killer as one of her ‘children’.

This blessing is in stark contrast to the Misfit, who – in almost Dostoevskian fashion – characterises Christianity as a case of either giving up anything and following Christ or rejecting him and doing as one pleases. Anything – murder, burning down someone’s house – is permissible and constitutes the only true pleasure one can get from life.

The grandmother’s final act of blessing (forgiveness, or a last desperate attempt to save her own life?) raises this petty, racially prejudiced, and comical old woman far above the level of the nihilistic Misfit and all he represents.

Of course, it may also be significant that the Misfit – who was accused by one of the prison psychiatrists of killing his own father – personally kills the grandmother, who represents an old and outmoded America. Flannery O’Connor’s story is about a changing America, and the text is marked by the Grandmother’s continual reminiscences about a better, simpler life when she was younger.

The story’s title, taken from Red Sammy’s conversation with the Grandmother in which they lament that the world has become debased and degraded during their lifetimes, places this mood and tone at the centre of the story.

In this connection, the grandmother’s attitude towards African-Americans is already outdated, even in 1955 when the story first appeared.

Her racial stereotypes , such as associating African-Americans with watermelons, the offensive words she uses to describe the black boy they pass in the car, and her casual presumptions about the lives of black people all mark her out as a representative of an older American outlook which is about to be entirely laid to rest with the onset of the US Civil Rights movement. (The Montgomery Bus Boycott , for example, occurred at the end of 1955, the year the story appeared.)

Final thoughts

Viewed this way, ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ might be productively analysed alongside a another key American text from the 1950s: Tennessee Williams’ play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , also from 1955, similarly deals with the generational gap between an older America and the younger Americans who represent a new attitude, especially regarding race.

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A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Summary & Analysis

In A Good Man Is Hard to Find , O’Connor depicts a road trip to Florida that ends unpredictably. A comical chain of accidents leads to a tragedy. A typical American family encounters a gang of criminals on a lonely country road, with no one to come for help. The gangsters kill the family members one by one in a nearby forest while their leader is philosophizing about morality and religion.

Welcome to A Good Man Is Hard to Find Summary & Analysis page prepared by our editorial team! Here you’ll find a detailed summary and analysis of the most famous short story by Flannery O’Connor.

• 📰 Episode 1
• 👒 Episode 2
• 🥪 Episode 3
• 🛣️ Episode 4
• 🚙 Episode 5
• 👓 Episode 6
• 🏞️ Episode 7
• 💥 Episode 8
• 🩸 Episode 9
• 🗺️ Navigation

🎓 References

📰 a good man is hard to find: episode 1.

Bailey is taking his family on a trip to Florida, but the Grandmother objects. She would rather go to Tennessee. She substantiates her objections by a newspaper article about a dangerous criminal, The Misfit, who is at large. He has escaped the federal prison and is heading toward Florida, too. The old lady says she would not answer to her conscience if she took her children in the same direction as the criminal has escaped.

Just you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did. A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Active Characters

Bailey, the Grandmother, John Wesley, June Star, the baby’s mother

Active Themes

The Grandmother is never mentioned by name in the story. Moreover, she is ignored by the adults and mocked by the children. Nobody shows any respect for her, but her obnoxious behavior does not raise any reader’s affection.

Her namelessness suggests two themes: the young generation’s unwillingness to take their grandparents seriously and the universality of the character.

👒 A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Episode 2

The next morning, all six of them get into the car. The Grandmother was in the car before anybody else, dressed up.

Her collars and cuffs were white organdy 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. A Good Man Is Hard to Find

The old lady takes her cat, Pitty Sing, and is afraid to leave him alone for three days.

During the trip, the Grandmother keeps talking. She tries to entertain the kids by playing with them. She also tells a story from her youth, when a suitor brought her a watermelon, but a “nigger boy” mistakenly ate it. In the course of the ride, she sees a “pickaninny” in the door of a shack. He has no pants, and when June Star notes that, the old lady replies: “Little niggers in the country don’t have things like we do.” Then she remarks: “If I could paint, I’d paint that picture.” Then they pass by a field with six graves in the middle. It was an old graveyard of a family that “belonged to a plantation.”

Although the years of plantations and slavery are “gone with the wind,” as the Grandmother points out, the aged people preserve the old racist views .

The three short moments mentioned in the previous paragraph indicate the old lady’s racist approach to African Americans.

She feigns her compassion to the poor boy, but in fact, she does not perceive him as equal to her grandchildren. And once again, even the cat has a name, but the Grandmother does not.

🥪 A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Episode 3

The family stops to eat barbecued sandwiches at The Tower, which is a gas station and a dance hall at a time. The name of Red Sam, the master of the station, is mentioned in the advertisements mentioning his barbecue, “happy laugh,” and a veteran past . During their dinner, Bailey’s wife turns on the music on a jukebox. The Grandmother asks Bailey to dance, but he leaves her question unanswered. When a faster tune comes up, Bailey’s daughter decides to dance. then Red Sam’s wife asks June Star if she would like to be her daughter, but the girl rudely replies that she “wouldn’t live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks!”

Then Red Sam has a short conversation with the Grandmother about the fact that the people are no longer as friendly and kind as they used to be. They agree that nobody can be trusted these days.

A good man is hard to find… Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more. A Good Man Is Hard to Find

The Grandmother asks if he has read about The Misfit. Sam’s wife says she won’t be surprised if the criminal attacks their restaurant, but her husband interrupted her and sent her to bring the drinks for the guests. Then he remarks that one can no longer leave the screen door unlocked. The Grandmother blames Europe for the low morality: “The way Europe acted you would think we were made of money.”

Bailey, the Grandmother, Red Sam, Red Sam’s wife, John Wesley, June Star, the baby’s mother

All the characters have their sins. The children are disrespectful to the older people, but it is no wonder as their father ignores his mother most of the time. Bailey’s wife is quiet and ordinary with a face “broad and innocent as a cabbage.” Even the old lady is selfish and manipulates other people . Red Sam does not wish to discuss the dangers of the real world. Instead, he prefers a self-righteous conversation about how bad the new generation is and the guilt of Europe.

Indeed, a good man is very hard to find. This meaningless cliche was said to support the conversation, but it became symbolic in the perspective of the entire story.

🛣️ A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Episode 4

They drive off. The old lady suggests visiting an old plantation which she visited in her young years. Moreover, she knows how to get there. Knowing that her son, Bailey, would object to additional road time, she invents a story that there exists a secret panel with silver hidden behind it. The children are excited by the possibility to look for the hidden panel. The Grandmother continues that it is not far away, but Bailey says, “No.” Then the children start kicking and screaming, and the father has to surrender.

All right!.. Will you all shut up? Will you all just shut up for one second? If you don’t shut up, we won’t go anywhere. A Good Man Is Hard to Find

The Grandmother and the children spend some time speculating about the house and its secret panel, but Bailey says that they will not go inside the building as people may live there. John Welsey, the son, suggests sneaking in, but his mother says no. They are driving the dirt road for a while, and then Bailey threatens he will turn back. But the next moment, a “horrible thought” came to her. It was so embarrassing that “her feet jumped up,” hitting the valise in the corner. The cat escapes his hide and jumps on Bailey’s shoulder. He swerves, and the car turns right side up off the road. The “horrible thought” was that the plantation was not in Georgia but in Tennessee. It was one big mistake.

Flannery O’Connor makes her story move faster. The family was discussing mundane things. The children see no harm in sneaking into the house. They do not respect other people’s privacy as their father does.

The Grandmother’s egoism, manipulations, and self-centeredness caused the accident. Had she not taken the cat or asked to visit the plantation, no accident would have happened.

In addition, Bailey is shown as a man tired of his mother’s vexatiousness and his children’s rudeness. At the same time, he is a bad son and father as his family’s relationships are quite unhealthy.

🚙 A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Episode 5

Bailey’s wife and her baby fell out of the car into the ditch. The baby is crying, and the mother has a broken shoulder. June Star says with disappointment, “But nobody’s killed.” Surprisingly, the Grandmother’s biggest concern is expressed in one phrase: “I believe I have injured an organ.” They are ten feet below the road level. There are only the ditch and the forest as far as an eye can reach. They were trapped in the wild, so the sight of a big black battered automobile approaching them raised their spirits.

The car continued to come on slowly, disappeared around a bend and appeared again, moving even slower, on top of the hill they had gone over. It was a big black battered hearse-like automobile. There were three men in it. A Good Man Is Hard to Find

The car stops above them on the road. The driver looks out and then says something to the other two passengers. All three of them come up to the family.

Bailey, the Grandmother, John Wesley, June Star, the baby’s mother, the Misfit, Bobby Lee, Hiram

Bailey’s wife suffered the most. She and her baby seem to be the most pitiful characters in the short story. On the contrary, her daughter laments that no one has died, and the Grandmother lies about her injuries. The two of them would prefer the accident to be more serious, which suggests their narrow-mindedness and selfishness.

The symbolism of the car is literally stated in the text: it resembles a hearse that carries the death. The dramatic shift is on the way, and the culmination is near.

👓 A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Episode 6

The three men surround the family, holding guns in their hands. One of them with “silver-rimmed spectacles that gave him a scholarly look” had no shirt on. The Grandmother has a “peculiar feeling” that she has seen the bespectacled man before. When he steps down the road with the words “Good afternoon… I see you all had a little spill,” she remarks that they have turned over twice. He says he saw that it was only once and tells one of his companions to see if the car is in running order.

John Wesley wonders what the gun is for, and the man in glasses asks Bailey’s wife to calm her children. Then June Star rudely inquired: “What are you telling US what to do for?”.

Bailey starts explaining their predicament, but at that moment, the Grandmother interrupts him screaming, “You’re the Misfit!”

The bespectacled man remarks that it would have been better had she not recognized him. Bailey says something to his mother, and she starts crying. The Misfit tries to comfort her.

Don’t you get upset… I don’t reckon he meant to talk to you that away. A Good Man Is Hard to Find

She wonders if he would ever shoot an old lady. The reply is, “I would hate to have to.”

The children’s rudeness is not just foolish; it becomes dangerous. Furthermore, the old lady decided to flaunt her knowledge and detective skills. Her simplicity and loose tongue used to articulate everything that enters her mind made the criminal shift from helping the people in distress to killing them. Surprisingly, Bailey’s words (whereof the reader is ignorant) upset her more than the fact that the dangerous criminal is standing next to her. The Misfit seems to be sympathetic to the family. He even pronounces some words of comfort. Obviously, he did not intend to kill them from the very beginning.

🏞️ A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Episode 7

The Grandmother continues that she knows the Misfit is a good person.

Listen… I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people! A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Bailey asks her to shut up.

Then The Misfit tells his men to take Bailey and John Wesley to the forest as if intending to ask them something. As they go, Bailey shouts: “I’ll be back in a minute, Mamma, wait on me.”

The Grandmother desperately cries, “Bailey boy!” and keeps on insisting that The Misfit is a kind man. “I ain’t a good man,” the criminal replies. Then he tells the story of his life. He was different from his brothers and sisters. His father said, “He’s going to be into everything.” And so he was, “at home and abroad, been twice married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive.” His first imprisonment changed his personality: “I was buried alive,” as he describes it. Then two shots are heard.

The Grandmother keeps assuring the Misfit that he is a good man and that he should pray more, never realizing that he does not want to. He does not need God’s help because he can do everything all by himself. He never was a bad boy, but life circumstances made him one. Flannery O’Connor uses sounds and colors in A Good Man is Hard to Find to provide a summary of the complicated feelings and emotions her characters go through.

The two pistol shots and the Grandmother’s shouting “Bailey boy!” require no explanation. These were the first feelings of affection she had shown to her family in the entire story, and probably in her whole life.

💥 A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Episode 8

Bailey’s wife began to breathe heavily, and The Misfit asked his companions to take her to the forest to join the husband. The Grandmother is left one-on-one with the criminal. He says he always forgets his crimes during the punishments, so now he asks for a copy of documents to compare the severity of punishment with his evil deeds.

I call myself The Misfit because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment. A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Another shot is heard from the woods. The Misfit asks the Grandmother if it is fair that some people are punished so much while others are so little. She says that there is “good blood” in him and that he “wouldn’t shoot a lady.”

The Grandmother, June Star, the baby’s mother, the Misfit, Bobby Lee, Hiram

The punishment is deteriorating human nature more than improving it. The penitentiary system of those days required profound reformation. In her turn, the Grandmother remains unaware that her understanding of “goodness” is too narrow in front of the harsh and violent real world.

🩸 A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Episode 9

Another two shots are audible. The Misfit says he would like to live in the days of Jesus.

Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead… and He shouldn’t have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him… A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Then the Grandmother calls the criminal one of her babies, touching his shoulder.

Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children! A Good Man Is Hard to Find

The next moment he shoots her to death and cleans his glasses. When all the bodies are put together, the Misfit remarks that she would have been a good person if there was a gun in front of her face every minute of her life.

The Grandmother, the Misfit, Bobby Lee, Hiram

This is when the climax of the story comes. The confrontation with real danger transforms the Grandmother. She treats the criminal as her son, forgiving him and feeling almost holy love . But the universe is too evil to let this story have a happy ending.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Analysis of Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find

Analysis of Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 25, 2021

Frequently anthologized, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” exemplifies Flannery O’Connor’s southern religious grounding. The story depicts the impact of Christ on the lives of two seemingly disparate characters. One is a grandmother joining her son’s family on a trip to Florida. Accompanied by a silent daughter-in-law, a baby, two unpleasant children, and her smuggled cat, she wheedles the son into making a detour to see a plantation that she remembers from an earlier time.

Moments of recognition and connection multiply as the seemingly foreordained meeting of the grandmother and the killer she has read about in the paper takes place. She upsets the basket in which she has hidden her cat; the cat lands on her son’s neck, causing an accident. Soon three men appear on the dirt road, and the grandmother recognizes one of them as the notorious killer the Misfit.

Flannery O’Connor/National Catholic Register

O’Connor weaves the notion of punishment and Christian love into the conversation between the Misfit and the grandmother while the grandmother’s family is being murdered. Referring to the similarity that he shares with Christ, the Misfit declares that “Jesus thrown everything off balance” (27), but he admits that unlike Christ, he must have committed a crime because there were papers to prove it. When the grandmother touches his shoulder because she sees him as one of her own children, she demonstrates a Christian love that causes him to shoot her.

This story typifies O’Connor’s mingling of comedy, goodness, banality, and violence in her vision of a world that, however imperfect, most readers inevitably recognize as part of their own. O’Connor views the world as a place where benevolence and good intentions conflict with perversity and evil, and her protagonists frequently learn too late that their lives can crumble in an instant when confronted by the very real powers of darkness.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Kessler, Edward. Flannery O’Connor and the Language of Apocalypse. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Orvell, Miles. Flannery O’Connor: An Introduction. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991

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A Good Man Is Hard To Find

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Written in 1953 and published in the short story collection of the same name in 1955, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is perhaps Flannery O'Connor’s most famous work.

Set memorably in the South, it explores the thin line between sin and redemption, villain and victim, and whether there is ultimate truth in Jesus' statement:

No one is good except God alone.

Flannery O'Connor

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

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A Good Man is Hard to Find

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Analysis: “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”

“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a story in the Southern Gothic tradition, a genre that Flannery O’Connor used in most of her writing. This genre is characterized by grotesque characters and settings, disturbing or highly unusual events, and often dark humor. It is also always deeply rooted in the post-Civil War American South and grew out of the contradictions of Southern society.

For example, traditionally the South is thought of as an idyllic, green landscape where the people have Old World manners and beliefs. Christianity is also deeply engrained in Southern society. What matters most are appearance and propriety. However, the South was built on a legacy of slavery, genocide, patriarchy, and violence. These dark, disturbing aspects of society are often repressed by the people living there. Flannery O’Connor, a native of Georgia, grew up experiencing this contradictory culture and thus explores these contradictions and hypocrisies through her use of the Southern Gothic style . However, she roots her stories in true, believable characters, thus preventing her writing from becoming comical or fully Gothic in the traditional sense.

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A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Essay Prompts, Summary, & Analysis

Flannery O’Connor is one of the most famous American short story writers of the 20 th century. Her impactful writing pieces with memorable characters and multiple dimensions of meaning are often anthologized. If you are looking for A Good Man Is Hard to Find essay prompts, here is a detailed guide to help you out.

• 🔰 Short Summary
• 🔝 Top Essay Questions
• 📝 Essay Prompts
• 🎭 Character Analysis
• 🔍 Literary Analysis

🔗 References

🔰 a good man is hard to find short summary.

If you want A Good Man Is Hard to Find summary condensed to one sentence, it will be as follows: a family of six travels to Florida, gets into a car crash on their way, and gets killed by an escaped convict, The Misfit.

However, if you need more careful and insightful literary analysis , things are not as simple as that. A more attentive reader would summarize the short story as follows – we’ve presented it as a diagram for your convenience.

🔝 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Essay Questions

Here are some research questions you can examine in a critical essay or research paper:

• How are love and marriage negotiated in the story?
• What are the main plot contradictions?
• What is the secular meaning of the story?
• How is individualism explored in the piece?
• What are the traces of Protestantism in the short story?
• How does A Good Man Is Hard to Find fit the concept of Catholic fiction?
• Why does the story belong to the Southern gothic style ?
• How does O’Connor approach forgiveness and religiosity in the story?
• What is the role of the landscape in the story?
• How does O’Connor question southern ladyhood in the story?
• What are the traces of John Milton’s style in the short story?
• How does O’Connor approach the degradation of values in her story?
• What are the anagogical Biblical allusions in the short story?
• How does O’Connor use grotesque to talk about the idyllic agrarian South?
• What are the Civil War references in the story?

📝 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Essay Prompts

If assigned an essay about A Good Man Is Hard to Find , you may face the challenge of formulating an interesting, research-worthy topic. Indeed, there has been so much written and said about this short story that you may be clueless about a new angle. Here are a couple of essay prompts and thesis ideas our pros have prepared for your inspiration.

• Means, meaning, and mediated space in A Good Man Is Hard to Find . Flannery O’Connor talked about the failures of the Southern gothic genre to depict Southernness and addressed those problems in the short story. The means of what, in your opinion, were the characters of The Grandmother and The Misfit? What meaning did the author associate with their encounter? What unique spatial rhetoric did O’Connor apply to juxtapose the Southern ideal and the modern American capitalist image?
• Violence as a path to transformation. O’Connor used violence as a means of epiphany and transformation trajectory for its characters. How do her characters go through that path from the moment of a car crash?
• The genesis of O’Connor’s story . Where did O’Connor source inspiration for her short stories, specifically A Good Man Is Hard to Find ? How does Bailey’s reading of the Atlanta Journal at the beginning of the story hint at its genesis and the materials on which it was based?
• The ambiguity of goodness in O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find. What are the moral codes by which the story’s characters live? How do they differ? What does O’Connor associate with the “good man” concept voiced by different characters?
• The Role of The Misfit in the story . What role does The Misfit play in Grandmother’s moral transformation? Does The Misfit help her recognize her sinful life? Trace the main character’s evolution and insights during her dialogue with the criminal.
• Discussion of faith in the story. O’Connor dedicated an anthology of short stories to original sins and talked about Catholicism in her writings. How is the Catholic faith explored in A Good Man Is Hard to Find ? from which angle does the author approach the concept of Catholic mercy?
• The role of foreshadowing in A Good Man Is Hard to Find. How is the foreshadowing technique used in the story? Which elements are used to predict the unfortunate outcome for The Grandmother’s family?
• Plot analysis of A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Revisit the plot and identify the roles of every character in it. How does the story’s plot develop, and what are its major turning points?
• Communication in A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Characters in the story get (or don’t get) what they want in communicating with each other. How does O’Connor approach politeness in her story, and what means and ends does politeness serve in characters’ interactions?
• The depiction of selfishness in A Good Man Is Hard to Find. Selfishness is an outstanding feature of The Grandmother. In what contexts does she reveal her selfish nature? To what consequences does it lead?
• Character analysis of The Grandmother in A Good Man Is Hard to Find. What are the main characters of O’Connor’s short story? How do they interact, and what purposes do they serve in the story’s plot?
• O’Connor’s use of symbols and metaphors in A Good Man Is Hard to Find. The story is rich in symbols and metaphors as O’Connor’s favorite literary devices. What are the most prominent of them and what is the purpose of their use?
• Dreams and reality in A Good Man Is Hard to Find . The Misfit’s character mysteriously confuses reality and dreams, unable to tell what is real and unreal in his life. What purpose does this element serve in the story? What is O’Connor’s literary goal behind the reality-dream fusion?
• Literary devices in O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find. What literary devices does O’Connor use in the story? What function do they perform in it?
• The characters’ moral codes in A Good Man Is Hard to Find. What are the different moral codes the story’s characters follow? How do they justify those codes?

🎭 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Character Analysis

Though the story is about a family of six and contains many other characters, the core roles are assigned to two characters – The Grandmother and The Misfit.

Here is the detailed character analysis to help you understand these personas better.

The Grandmother

The Grandmother is the story’s main character.

She is highly judgmental, selfish, and self-directed, wishing that everyone follows her whims and obeys. She lives with her son’s family and tries to get things her way, though facing disrespect and neglect from most family members.

Her numerous references to her youth, courting with young gentlemen before marriage, and her sophisticated dress for the trip hint at her superficial, indolent lifestyle and non-impressive intellectual ability.

The Grandmother also acts as an aristocrat and racist, behaving as if she is superior to everyone around her. She likes to talk about the good old times – probably because she used to enjoy popularity as a young lady and led an active social life devoid of spirituality and meaning.

A meeting with The Misfit brings her face to face with a lack of grace and religion in her own life. By begging him to pray and seek salvation, The Grandmother also seems to talk to herself and realize that she also needs to gain the divine grace, at least at the end of her life. However, even at this heartbreaking climax of the story, she acts selfishly and doesn’t think about her family, begging for remorse only for herself and finally getting killed.

The Misfit is the story’s antagonist – the one who kills The Grandmother and her family upon their encounter on a deserted Southern road. His enigmatic character is a sharp contradiction to the ordinary, even trivial characters of The Grandmother’s family.

The Misfit is well-bred and morally reasonable, but he is a cruel criminal, killing everyone, from an infant to an old lady. He talks positively about his family but simultaneously confesses to killing his father. He is a philosopher relentlessly engaged in soul-searching and pondering over the existence of God.

Upon more careful consideration, one can see that The Grandmother and The Misfit met to encourage the religious search for grace and divine meaning in each other. A desperate man with a complex of puzzling contradictions and a superficial, selfish woman both needed a life-changing encounter, and they received that chance. Following O’Connor’s logic, they both abandoned the chance for divine grace, but the transcendent event revealed the mystery of human encounters with the divine.

Minor Characters

The minor characters include the disinterested family members of The Grandmother – her frustrated and detached son Bailey, a speechless daughter-in-law, and rude little children getting things their way with screams and misbehavior. Other characters are Red Sammy Butts – a café owner fond of complaining and remembering old times, and his distrustful wife. The story also mentions two Misfit accomplices – Hiram and Bobby Lee.

🎵 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Themes

Here are the main themes O’Connor examined in her literary piece.

The Catholic religion theme is one of the main topics in the short story. O’Connor juxtaposes real religiosity with the shallow Catholic accessories that The Grandmother uses to go for a believer. Only an encounter with death makes her realize the sinful nature of her existence and seek salvation for herself.

Mentions of death have been woven into the story’s fabric since its beginning. The Grandmother talks about The Misfit as a murderer and insists on taking Pitty Sing with them, afraid of his death alone at home. The Grandmother dresses up to show everyone that she is a lady, even if her corpse is to be found after a car crash. Thus, death is the family’s companion throughout the story, coming in its ugly, tangible form upon encountering The Misfit. Death becomes the moment of The Grandmother’s revelation and enlightenment, as only the fear of death makes her sincere to herself.

In religious terms, divine grace is the moment of epiphany during which the believer comes face to face with their genuine nature and can achieve peace of mind and spiritual salvation. The Grandmother’s and The Misfit’s spiritual blindness are examined in the story as barriers to salvation and their inability to unite with God.

🗺️ A Good Man Is Hard to Find Setting

A Good Man Is Hard to Find was written in the best tradition of Southern gothic literature, which is evident from the typical description of the story’s setting. It was popular among Southern gothic writers to use the scenery of the American South as facilitating devices in their plots. Here, the reader also comes across such images like:

• Lonely plantations
• Aging and lonely Southerners (the figure of Red Sammy Butts and his small road café)
• Dusty downtown
• References to slavery past (a black child The Grandmother referred to as a “little nigger”)

Besides, the story complies with other conventions of the genre by featuring shallow, morally degrading characters that are “not quite right” in universal human terms. The main characters – The Grandmother and The Misfit – both have troubles with morality, though each in their own way.

🔍 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Literary Analysis

O’Connor also used many literary and stylistic means to enrich her short story with multiple levels of meaning. Here is the detailed literary analysis to guide your interpretation work.

Symbolism in A Good Man Is Hard to Find

The story is filled with many symbols , such as The Grandmother’s hat (the woman’s hypocrisy and self-centeredness), The Misfit’s automobile (a “black, battered hearse-like” vehicle signaling that only death awaits those who meet it).

There are also many symbolic references to animals in the story. The daughter-in-law’s headkerchief is compared to a rabbit’s ears, The Misfit presents himself as a “different breed of dog” from his siblings, and Bailey’s voice becomes “a snarl” when he blames his mother. Thus, O’Connor likened all characters to animals, unable to analyze their actions and living simple lives directed at survival.

Imagery in a Good Man Is Hard to Find

Besides the numerous symbols in A Good Man Is Hard to Find discussed above, the short story contains many allusions to people and cultural artifacts. For instance, the young boy’s name is John Wesley – an allusion to one of the first Anglican Church ministers in the USA. The cat’s name is an allusion to a comic opera, Mikado , featuring a character concerned about fitting the crime to the punishment (just like The Misfit). Gone with the Wind and The Tennessee Waltz both serve as metaphors for The Grandmother’s longing for her hilarious past, which becomes the source of her family’s problems.

Irony in a Good Man Is Hard to Find

Irony is used many times in the story to show how skillfully The Grandmother deceives the whole family and leads them to demise while being Bailey’s mom – a woman promising never to put her family at risk. In fact, all family troubles occur because of The Grandmother’s selfish whims and an absence of care for the rest of her family and their interests.

Another illustrative example of irony is The Grandmother’s repeated appeals to The Misfit as “a good man.” She tries to convince him not to kill her because she’s a lady, which is highly ironic, as she led the whole family to this tragedy and has never been a good person.

Foreshadowing in a Good Man Is Hard to Find

O’Connor used many elements of foreshadowing in the story.

The Misfit is mentioned in the first lines, dooming the family to an encounter with him. The family sees a graveyard and tombstones on their way – literal death artifacts. The Misfit’s automobile looks like a hearse, promising death to everyone.

Besides, the woods in which The Grandmother’s encounter with The Misfit foreshadowed the family’s death. O’Connor described them as “a dark open mouth” that would soon absorb everyone’s lives.

Tone in a Good Man Is Hard to Find

O’Connor used different tones to achieve the intended effect of the story’s reading. In some places, the narrative sounds humoristic, while in others, it is full of detachment and focuses only on recording events and family members’ actions.

The story is also full of irony, which gets bitter when the family encounters The Misfit. In most fragments, the author used a serious tone – especially after the family met with the criminals and the elevating tension of family members’ killings.

With these tips and suggestions, you’re sure to complete an essay about A Good Man Is Hard to Find without any trouble. Look through our prompts, follow the writing advice, and your professor will be impressed by the depth and insight of your literary analysis of O’Connor’s story.

❓ A Good Man Is Hard to Find FAQ

What is the main theme of a good man is hard to find.

The story’s main theme is the spiritual blindness of its main characters and their religious and moral transformation in the encounter between The Grandmother and The Misfit. They both lack spirituality and refuse each other’s help, losing the chance for salvation.

What is the message in A Good Man Is Hard to Find?

The author’s central message is the power of human compassion and God’s grace in the transformation of shallow, non-religious creatures. The Misfit and The Grandmother receive a chance to understand genuine goodness during their life-changing encounter.

What is the moral of A Good Man Is Hard to Find?

O’Connor was an ardent Catholic, so her short stories mostly focused on religious vices and virtues. Her moral lesson in this story is the evil nature of selfishness and the person’s inability to attain divine grace from the position of selfishness and self-centeredness.

What is The Grandmother really like in A Good Man Is Hard to Find?

Though there is much irony in The Grandmother’s depiction, she still makes an impression of a selfish, egoistic person in the story. She talks the family into leaving their route for the sake of her whim; she never tries to save her family, and she is elitist and racist in her judgment.

• A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
• A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Summary & Analysis – Study.com
• Analysis of the novel, ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ – ThoughtCo
• A Good Man Is Hard to Find | Sarah Hyun’s Portfolio
• A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Themes – Custom-Writing.org

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A Good Man is Hard to Find

Flannery o’connor.

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Violence and Grace

At the story’s end, the Misfit says of the Grandmother , “She would of been a good woman . . . if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” Flannery O’Connor may not necessarily believe that being exposed to violence makes us better people, but the message is clear: violence changes us.

As Flannery O’Connor said when delivering remarks on the story, “I have found that violence is strangely…

The characters of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” live by a variety of moral codes, and both the story’s title and the Grandmother ’s conversation with Red Sam bring up the idea of goodness, and what makes a “good man.” In the end, as the Grandmother still insists that the Misfit —who has just murdered her entire family—is a “good man,” the question lingers: does being “good” depend on one’s internal character or…

Punishment and Forgiveness

Much of the discussion between the Grandmother and the Misfit concerns ideas of punishment and forgiveness. A vision of the world is presented in the Misfit’s words: “Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain’t punished at all?” A fundamental question in Flannery O’Connor’s Christian worldview is the problem of evil: why do bad things happen to good people, and vice versa?

We are given no tidy…

Familial Conflict and Familial Love

Only at the story’s end do we get the slightest hint of familial love. Not only does the Grandmother shout “Bailey Boy! Bailey Boy!” as the only real affectionate moment inside her family, but she then goes on to refer to the Misfit as her own son. These moments of familial love, arriving only when the Grandmother faces death, appear in stark contrast to the rest of the story, which is filled with family members…

Moral Decay

The story’s title itself refers to the apparent moral decline witnessed by the Grandmother and others. There was a time, the Grandmother believes, when it was not so difficult to find good men, though we might wonder if that was ever actually true. To the Grandmother, though, the story’s action supports this belief. When stranded after a car crash, the family is not tended to by friendly neighbors, but by a killer and his henchmen…

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