Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was first published in 1953. In the story, the author tries to bring out the challenge between good and evil and the prospect of eternal grace.
In the opening scene of the story, we meet the grandmother who is trying to argue with Bailey, his son not to take kids who are her grandchildren to Florida because they had been there before and instead take them to East Tennessee. She argues that they should be given a chance to tour the world to be broad. The only reason the grandmother wants to visit Tennessee we found out is because she wants to visit her “connections,” which brings out firmly her conniving and selfish interests. The grandmother, in her scheming, brings up the Misfit, a character that escapes the Federal pen and heads towards Florida. She even tells her son, “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.” We learn from this text that the grandmother is trying to guilt-trip the son to taking her family to Florida to suit her preferences. When she says she could not answer to her conscience demonstrates how she holds herself in high regard. However, it is false piousness considering she is trying to twist arms to have her way with the trip shows the irony of that statement. The grandmother is more concerned with meeting her friends than she is with going with the family where they want to go.
The other thing that comes out of this part of the text is how disrespectful the family members are towards grandmother. When grandmother fails to get the attention of Bailey, who she even rattles a newspaper above his head, she turns to the children’s mother and tries to convince her out of the Florida idea. The lady who does not even look up at her tells her bluntly that she should stay home if she did not want to go with them. This form of disrespect has also been taught to the kids, one of the children named June Star in regards to her grandmother staying home says, “She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day.” In another statement, the same child says, “Afraid that she would miss something. She has to go everywhere we go.” This indicates how contemptuous the family is towards the grandmother. It shows how burdened they feel, just having her around them.
Bailey even belittles her concerns against coming into contact with the Misfit by saying he would smack him.
Despite all the things the family members say about the grandmother, she is the first person to enter the car the next day, ready to go for the trip. To show how enthusiastic she is to be with the sons’ family and to show her affectionate nature, we see that she even brings along the cat Pitty Sing which she hides in a basket so that the family members would not find out. She is afraid that she would miss her too much, and if they left her alone for the days, they would be gone, it would brush against the gas burners and asphyxiate itself.