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a good man
foundation
or certainty of belief. The Misfit is incapable of wrapping himself around
the paradox as Flannery O'Connor phrased it "that you must believe in order
to understand, not understand in order to believe."
As the paths of these two characters converge in the final moment of the
story, they are both given opportunities for grace. When the Grandmother
finally runs out of words and is left to mutter "Jesus" over and over,
O'Connor is suggesting that she is moving toward a deeper awareness of
her faith. Similarly, when the Misfit angrily pounds his fist into the
ground and complains, "I wisht I had of been there. It ain't right I wasn't
there because if I had been there I would of known," we recognize his frustrated
longing for faith. When he confesses "If I had of been there I would of
known and I wouldn't be like I am now," the Grandmother has a moment of
clarity and recognizes his twisted humanity as part of her own by calling
him one of her children. In O'Connor's words, "The Misfit is touched by
the Grace that comes through the old lady when she recognizes him as her
child, as she has been touched by the Grace that comes through him in his
particular suffering." The Grandmother realizes, O'Connor explained in
a later essay, "that she is responsible for the man before her and joined
to him by ties of kinship which have their roots deep in the mystery she
has been merely prattling about so far."
The Misfit has an opportunity to accept grace but recoils in horror at
the Grandmother's gesture. In his parting words, however, he acknowledges
how grace had worked through him to strengthen the woman's faith: "She
would of been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her
every minute of her life." Brinkmeyer points out that "the Misfit's `preaching'
to the Grandmother `converts' her to Christ." The Misfit himself seems
lost, as his dismissive words to Bobby Lee, "It's no real pleasure in life,"
indicate. Flannery O'Connor, however, had the last word on the Misfit and
his future: "I don't want to equate the Misfit with the devil. I prefer
to think, however unlikely this may seem, the old lady's gesture, like
the mustard-seed, will grow to be a great crow-filled tree in the Misfit's
heart, and will be enough of a pain to him there to turn him into the prophet
he was meant to become. But that's another story."
Source: Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton An overview of "A Good Man Is Hard to
Find," in Short Stories for Students, Gale Research, 1997.
Source Database: Literature Resource Center