A Good Man is Hard to Find Summary & Analysis

Right from the start, the Misfit’s arrival into the story is foreshadowed by a newspaper article—although at this point he doesn’t seem to belong in the family’s mundane world of the family’s self-absorption and squabble. The story is set in the South, as almost all of O’Connor’s work is, and the Grandmother already starts to appear as one of her more self-righteous, hypocritical characters.

The family argues constantly: nobody listens to the Grandmother, and her grandchildren mock her. Meanwhile the Grandmother tries to use guilt and manipulation to get her way, all while pretending to be selfless. Instead of having a frank discussion about each person’s views, they just bicker and get nowhere.

The grandkids poke fun at the Grandmother’s hypocrisy and small-mindedness—she would insist on going along even somewhere she doesn’t want to go. This is seemingly a valid point, but it’s also presented in a cruel and disrespectful way, so the Grandmother doesn’t even consider it, but instead just keeps bickering.

As June Star and John Wesley predicted, the Grandmother is certainly not going to miss the trip. Her selfishness is reflected in secretly bringing the cat—though she thinks of her act as one of kindness, in somehow protecting the cat from “missing her too much.”

The Grandmother’s dress reveals much about her character: rather than thinking of comfort, she thinks of how her body might be found if they get in a car accident. She dresses up, hoping that, no matter what, she will be identified as a proper lady. She is so caught up in following social convention that she does not understand that death is truly the end: how she is remembered will no longer affect her. She is very narrow-minded, and can’t yet consider anything like the reality of her own mortality.

To the Grandmother, John Wesley and June Star’s behavior is representative of the moral decay she sees in society. They mock their home state and disrespect their elders. The Grandmother maintains a sense of superiority, but then turns around and shows that her own “old-fashioned morals” include overt racism.

O’Connor portrays more mundane family conflicts, painting a picture of the family members as each selfish and small-minded in their own way. The Grandmother sees her grandchildren as disrespectful and ignorant of what it means to be “good.” Meanwhile her own fixation on the plantation from her past shows how nostalgia colors her entire worldview, and her reference to “Gone With the Wind” suggests that the more “moral” past she misses was an ideal that never existed in the first place, and was in fact based on racism and even slavery.

The Grandmother’s story also shows her nostalgia for what she sees as a simpler and better time. Her reflection—that she should have married the man who died rich off Coca-Cola stock—makes it clear that worldly concerns are more important to her than spiritual ones (or even ideas of romantic love). The Grandmother once again shows the racism inherent in her worldview and longing for the “Old South,” as she portrays the black “boy” in the story as just a simple and comic figure.

Though Red Sam later laments the same moral decay that the Grandmother sees in the world, he cruelly keeps a monkey chained to a tree. It quickly becomes apparent that everything Red Sam does—whether it’s keeping a monkey at his gas station or advertising himself as a wholesome, virtuous veteran—is just a gimmick to get more money and customers.

June Star’s response—laughing at the idea of living in The Tower and vocally criticizing it to Red Sam’s wife—is representative of the disrespectful attitude that the Grandmother sees in a younger generation. The Grandmother is hypocritical and “sinful” in her own way, but as we see here it’s also true that her grandchildren are rude and spoiled.

Like The Grandmother, Red Sam is clearly a hypocrite: he chastises his wife for not working hard enough, and then takes a seat himself. He and the Grandmother agree on all kinds of cliché sayings about how times have changed. Red Sam tells a story clearly intending to make himself seem virtuous, and the Grandmother eagerly leaps to the conclusion that Red Sam is a “good man.” This is an important aspect of O’Connor’s theme of “goodness” in the story—just what makes a “good man?” At this point, the Grandmother thinks “goodness” means being polite, nice, respectful, and agreeing with her views on things. Red Sam meets all these criteria—at least around the Grandmother herself, as it seems that he’s mostly just trying to butter up his customers.

When Red Sam silences his wife for bringing up The Misfit, he reveals an unwillingness to confront the violence and hardship that exists in the world—instead, he would rather have a nice, self-righteous conversation about how the younger generation and Europe are no good. Tellingly, it’s the hypocritical, farcical character of Red Sam who delivers the statement that gives the story its title—he says it as just a meaningless cliché, but in light of the violence and grace that is to come, the phrase becomes more meaningful and complex.

Again, The Grandmother tries to manipulate her family into changing their plans. She openly lies here, but doesn’t seem to even admit it to herself, instead assuming that what she is doing is for the good of everyone else. The family does not discuss things open-mindedly, but shouts and argues until someone gives in. Bailey isn’t given much character in the story, but in general he seems weary and irritable, worn down by his mother’s nagging and his children’s rudeness. And yet he is also clearly not a very good son or father himself.

The tension between the parents (Bailey and his wife) and their children (June Star and John Wesley) shows a generational difference: the kids don’t respect other people’s privacy like their parents do. O’Connor escalates the story quickly, as these character studies of mundanity and hypocrisy quickly transition into something horrifying starting in the next few scenes.

Importantly, it is the Grandmother’s petty self-centeredness that causes the crash: without manipulating the family into visiting the house she wanted to see, and without sneaking her cat into the car, there would have been no crash (and even if they had otherwise crashed, it wouldn’t have been on a deserted back road). Even after the crash, all the Grandmother can think of is herself: she does not take the possibility of injury or death seriously, instead hoping that she is injured in order to get sympathy.

June Star’s reaction, too, reveals how un-seriously she treats the prospect of death or hardship. Clearly, the family does not appreciate that they could well have died. The Grandmother, becoming somehow even pettier in the face of danger, not only hopes that she is injured, but lies, saying that she is. It’s clear that the accident is the Grandmother’s “fault,” but this is also an example of the story’s theme of punishment and forgiveness, in which punishment often outweighs the crime—the Grandmother was hypocritical and manipulative, but a life-threatening car accident seems like too harsh of a “punishment” dealt to her by fate. The sudden appearance of the “hearse-like” car signals the dramatic shift in the story’s tone, as it becomes much darker. A hearse is a vehicle for carrying a coffin to a funeral, and here it clearly represents death entering the story in a very real way.

Everything suddenly gets more sinister with the arrival of the armed men, but the children are still totally self-absorbed and oblivious. The second half of the story now starts to mark the conflict between the petty, selfish world of the family and the harsh, meaningless reality of chaos and death.

Again, with the strangers, the Grandmother naturally lies to get sympathy, saying that the car flipped over twice. The man correcting her signifies the first small instance of the harsh truth cutting into her narrow world. The children’s rudeness suddenly becomes more dangerous and foolish, as they treat these sinister, armed men as if they were harmless figures like Red Sam.

The Grandmother, so excited to recognize the Misfit that she does not realize the threat he poses to her family, reveals herself once again to not take the prospect of violence or death seriously. Indeed, she is more upset by Bailey’s cursing at her than she is at the prospect of being trapped and alone with a known murderer—concerned, as usual, only with appearances and respectability. Even after the Misfit identifies himself, the Grandmother insists that he would not shoot an old woman. She is stuck in a conventional sense of a “good,” decent person, and does not appreciate what she is up against.

The Misfit, known to be a violent criminal, claims to come from a family of “good” people, making us consider again: where does goodness, or badness, come from? The Grandmother’s cliché idea that good parents will raise good children is clearly wrong—or perhaps her idea of “goodness” isn’t really goodness at all (it seems she didn’t do a very good job of raising her children or grandchildren either). We do not know what made the Misfit the way he is.

Only Bailey, who seems to be the most “normal” character in the family, although a totally ineffectual one, realizes the reality of the situation. The rest of the family members are still stuck in their everyday attitudes, which only violence will take them out of. Only when the Grandmother realizes that her son is about to be murdered does she cry out “Bailey Boy,” which is the first indication of any affection for her family. It’s also telling that first she tries to fix her hat—the symbol of her commitment to appearances and “respectability”—and it’s only when it literally falls apart that she starts to see the harsh reality of her situation.

The question of what makes someone “good” now comes front and center in the story, as the Misfit’s amoral worldview comes up against the Grandmother’s small-minded, traditional idea of goodness. She continues trying to be polite and respectable, offering the Misfit one of Bailey’s shirts, while the Misfit is operating on a whole different level—he seemingly isn’t concerned with goodness and badness at all, but only with why things are the way they are, and with fulfilling his own pleasures and desires. (Although it’s also darkly ironic that he apologizes for being “disrespectful” in front of the women, when he’s actually about to kill them.)

The Grandmother keeps assuring the Misfit that he could be a good man, not realizing that he does not want to be “good.” The Grandmother’s ideals of convention, respectability, and politeness have no appeal to him—he is only interested in pursuing what he wants to do. The Misfit is essentially a nihilist figure of chaos (nihilists believe life has no meaning), but one still steeped in the tradition of the South, explaining his concerns about politeness and Christianity.

If it was unclear before, we now know that the Misfit is willing to murder members of the family—and he seemingly feels no guilt about the murders, but also takes no pleasure in them. The Misfit refers to himself as being “buried alive” in prison, suggesting that his current existence is after some kind of rebirth upon his escape from prison. He has seen all kinds of horrible things, and has moved beyond everyday life to a more nihilistic view of things, one totally unconcerned with traditional morality or even the value of other people’s lives.

During the Misfit’s time in prison, he was punished for a crime he couldn’t remember committing. The punishment changed and confused the Misfit. Either his memory is distorted, or the doctor lied to him (or this is some twist on the Freudian idea of the Oedipal complex—wanting to kill one’s father—as the doctor is suggested to be a psychoanalyst, and the Misfit may have just misinterpreted his words). Either way, it is clear that the Misfit feels he was punished beyond what he deserved. This fits into the theme of punishment and forgiveness, as the family is being “punished” for their selfishness and hypocrisy by being killed. Recognition of the unfairness of life seems to have contributed to the Misfit’s rejection of morality.

The Misfit is not interested in prayer or God’s forgiveness. From experience, he has come to believe that committing wrongs does not matter: punishments will come regardless, and then it will be as if it never happened. He sees the harsh reality of the universe and reacts to it by being harsh and cruel himself. O’Connor is a Catholic, and so clearly believes in a benevolent and powerful God, but she never denies the seeming randomness and cruelty of life—faith, for her, is a crucial, harsh thing, not something easy or comforting. June Star seemingly remains oblivious, or else clings to her self-absorption in the face of terror.

The Misfit compares himself to Jesus, who in Christian theology was punished for all of humanity’s sins, though he himself was sinless. The Misfit, for his part, believes that he did commit some crime, but considers himself to be a similar martyr-like figure because he cannot remember committing it. The central idea of his relationship with punishment is made clear: “I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment.” Suffering and the unfairness of the world has transformed the Misfit, made him into a hard and (by conventional standards) evil man. He gives an explanation for his name here, but we might also expand upon it and say that he is a “misfit” more than a “villain” because by his own standard of amorality, he isn’t wicked at all—it’s just that his morality doesn’t “fit” in with that of the rest of humanity.

The Misfit, having seen past a sense of the world as a “fair” place, demands of the Grandmother whether she can understand why some are punished and others not. Essentially she is here clinging to her traditional ideas of morality and respectability (symbolized by the phrase “you wouldn’t shoot a lady”), ideas that hinge on the world being an orderly and “fair” place. She is completely forced to confront the Misfit’s universe now, however—a harsh and meaningless place.

The Misfit describes his version of a meaningful life: “nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can.” This goes directly against everything that the Grandmother—and society in general—believes makes a “good man.” Instead, the Misfit does not strive to be a “good man” at all. The only meaning he can find is in violence and pursuing pleasure and power. The Grandmother feels everything she has based her life upon crumbling away in the face of violence, true nihilism, and her own mortality—she is now spiritually naked, and ready for her “moment of grace.”

This is the story’s climax, and the Grandmother’s “moment of grace.” By being directly confronted with violence and death, she has been transformed (even if just for a moment). Whereas for most of the story all the Grandmother could think about was self-preservation, and all she did was bicker with her family, now she not only feels love toward her own family, but treats the Misfit as her own son, forgiving him for all his wrongs and experiencing a more meaningful, powerful, and even holy kind of love. Of course, in O’Connor’s harsh universe, this moment of grace does not mean a happy ending, and the Grandmother is punished for her act of reaching out being immediately shot. This tragic end only makes her epiphany seem even more powerful and vital.

After the “moment of grace,” O’Connor ends with the Misfit and his followers alone in their harsh, nihilistic world. The Grandmother’s body may never even be found, so she cannot depend on being identified as a “proper lady” as she had hoped—and her hat was destroyed anyway. Yet she achieved a kind of redemption in the moment of her death. As the Misfit says, having someone “there to shoot her” has made her into a “good woman” (that is, violence has brought her to a moment of grace). Here, finally, is a definition of goodness that even the Misfit will admit the reality of—the Grandmother’s brief moment of true “goodness” in reaching out to the Misfit in love. The Grandmother was transformed by this violent ending, and the Misfit, too, may have been changed in some small way by the Grandmother’s moment of grace. He chastises his henchman for suggesting that the murders were fun, even though earlier he had stated that there’s “no pleasure but meanness.” Now the Misfit states that there’s “no real pleasure” at all. His worldview has been challenged by this moment of pure humanity (and even divinity), but we don’t get to see how he reacts further than this—O’Connor remains brutal and realistic, and ends the dark story on a dark note.