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Similes
Situational Irony
Explanation and Analysis—The Misfit’s Manners:
In an example of situational irony, the Misfit—a violent murderer—initially treats the grandmother and her family with polite manners, as seen in the following passage:
“I’m sorry I don’t have on a shirt before you ladies,” he said, hunching his shoulders slightly. “We buried our clothes that we had on when we escaped and we’re just making do until we can get better.”
Here the Misfit apologizes to the grandmother, her daughter-in-law, and her granddaughter for not wearing a shirt “before you ladies” and even “hunch[es] his shoulders slightly” in a show of shame. He also refuses to lie to them, instead telling them, truthfully, that he and his two associates escaped from jail and are “just making do until we can get better” (language that communicates humility). The Misfit’s performance of politeness is an example of situational irony because readers would expect a murderous criminal (who does, in fact, go on to order his cronies to kill the whole family) to behave in a more depraved manner.
This is one of the many moments in the story in which O’Connor juxtaposes the appearance of morals with the actual embodiment of them. Like the grandmother, the Misfit is behaving in a way that suggests he is clear on what is “good” and what is “bad” in society (it is “good” to cover up in front of women, for example), but does not actually treat people well. His crimes are, of course, more severe than the grandmother’s, whose judgmental nature is not responsible for anyone’s deaths, and yet, O’Connor implies, hypocrisy is harmful in whatever form it appears.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Wrong State:
In an example of situational irony, the grandmother manipulates her family into taking a detour during their road trip in order to visit a plantation she’d once been to as a child, only to realize that the plantation was not only not on the road they were on, but was in an entirely different state. When she realizes this, she jumps, setting off a cascade of events that leads to a car accident. The following passage captures the irony of this moment:
“It’s not much farther,” the grandmother said and just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey’s shoulder.
The children were thrown to the floor and their mother, clutching the baby, was thrown out the door onto the ground; the old lady was thrown into the front seat.
In this passage, the grandmother tells her son Bailey that the plantation is “not much farther” (after he threatens to turn around on the unmarked dirt road) and, because she has shared countless details about the plantation, readers believe her. The ironic twist comes when she has the “embarrassing” realization (the content of which is revealed later) that the plantation she was thinking of is in Tennessee, not Georgia.
Not only has the grandmother led her family astray but, rather than apologizing and taking accountability for the harm she’s caused by manipulating them into this mission, she causes even more harm by jumping in embarrassment and thereby letting the cat out of her bag, which forces Bailey to swerve off the road. This sequence is both comedic and also serious, as it leads the Misfit to find them in their broken-down car and, ultimately, to kill them.
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Explanation and Analysis—Meeting the Misfit:
At the beginning of the story, the Grandmother warns her son Bailey that, if they decide to go to Florida on their family road trip, they might run into an escaped convict called the Misfit, foreshadowing their eventual meeting with him:
“Now look here, Bailey,” she said, “see here, read this,” and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. 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.”
Here the grandmother tells Bailey that she’s aware of the Misfit’s plans to go to Florida and that she “wouldn’t take [her] children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it,” implying that it is possible they could run into him if they journey there. By presenting the grandmother in a near-hysterical way (she is not showing her son the newspaper but “rattling” it at him), O’Connor is encouraging readers not to take her seriously, the same way that Bailey does not take her seriously. And yet her worries turn out to be well-founded, as they do run into the Misfit during their car ride south.
This moment is therefore also an example of situational irony, given that readers expect the story to go one way (for the family not to run into the Misfit) and it goes the other (not only do they run into him, but he kills them, the violent outcome that the grandmother likely feared). There is also a second layer of irony, which is the fact that it was the grandmother who forced the family to take the back road that led them to the Misfit, thereby unknowingly doing what she swore she would never do. Here O’Connor highlights the grandmother’s hypocrisy—while she believes herself to be acting morally throughout the story, she consistently brings harm to those around her, as well as to herself.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Grandmother’s Death:
In an example of both foreshadowing and situational irony, the grandmother decides, at the beginning of the story, to dress up for her family’s road trip so that, in the event of an accident, she would die looking like “a lady.” The following passage captures this ironic foreshadowing:
[T]he grandmother had on a 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 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.
Here the grandmother intentionally dons her best apparel—a sailor hat with flowers on the brim, a matching dress with lacy details, and a fancy flower pin—so that, should the family get into a car accident, “anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” This small moment communicates that the grandmother prioritizes appearances above all else while also foreshadowing the accident that the family does have, as well as the fact that she will end up dying on the side of the road during this road trip.
The situational irony here is that, while the grandmother does end up dying in these clothes, she does not die looking presentable. Not only does the accident ruin her hat and clothes, but she is killed in a ditch far from any main road. This would make it very unlikely for someone to find her body, and, if they did, it would be in an even more “unpresentable” and decayed state. This ironic plot twist subtly communicates that the grandmother would have been wiser to put her time into living a good, moral life, rather than prioritizing looking like she did.
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