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The Historical Flannery in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

In 1953, Flannery O'Connor wrote "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," which would become the title piece in her first published collection of short stories. One of her shorter and more anthologized works, the story concerns a Southern family (parents, two children, baby, and grandmother) that sets out on a vacation to Florida. The grandmother, who has been opposed to the trip from the beginning, partially on the grounds that there is a notorious killer named "The Misfit" on the loose, has snuck her cat, Pitty Sing, into the car against the will of her son.

Along the way to Florida, she regularly feels the need to make conversation and generally makes a nuisance of herself, finally manipulating the children into begging for a detour so they can visit an old plantation mansion she recalls from her youth. However, much to the grandmother's horror, she suddenly realizes that her memory has been playing tricks on her, and the plantation house is not located anywhere near where they are. At about this time, the cat gets loose and causes the family to have a wreck. No one is hurt, but The Misfit and his accomplices happen along in the midst of the chaos.

The grandmother recognizes him and stupidly blurts out his name, prompting him to send the family off into the woods one by one to be executed. While this is going on, he holds a discussion with the grandmother during which she tries every trick she knows to convince him not to hurt her, almost to the point of denying the Resurrection of Christ. Then, suddenly, she experiences a shock of revelation. She finally escapes her self-centered babbling long enough to recognize that The Misfit deserves her love and compassion as if he were one of her own children.

As she reaches out to him, he shoots her, observing that "She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life" (O'Connor 153).

There are two vital historical and autobiographical keys to understanding the full context within which this story was originally written. First, Flannery O'Connor was a devout Roman Catholic whose faith played a significant role in her fiction (and nonfiction). Second, Flannery O'Connor was a native of Georgia writing during the Southern Literary Renaissance which took place during the middle of the 20th century.

Aside from studies in Iowa and some time in Connecticut, Flannery O'Connor remained largely a home body, never straying far from the family farm in Milledgeville where she raised peacocks. She published her first book, Wise Blood in 1952 and died in 1964 at the age of 39. Her particular concerns as a writer in the South during the Literary Renaissance manifest themselves in this story through her concern with familial relationships, the importance of historical consciousness in the grandmother's mind, and the religious concerns of two of the characters.

In "Good Man" each successive generation is portrayed as having less respect for their elders than the generation before it, yet the grandmother continues to live with her son despite the difficulty of putting up with her. This indicates that family connections are still important to her son even if he isn't happy about it. At the end of the story, the grandmother recognizes that everyone is connected to everyone else in some way, all part of the same family.

Historical consciousness crops up a number of times in the story, mostly from the grandmother. She speaks fondly of the way things used to be, reminiscing about the good old days when people were nice and decent and had good manners. The cause of the family's demise is a detour to visit an ancient house that the grandmother remembers from the past.

At one point on the trip, the grandmother points out a graveyard that was once attached to a plantation. When her granddaughter asks where the plantation is, the grandmother replies, "Gone With the Wind [. . .] Ha. Ha" (O'Connor 139). This reference, of course, is to the famous book and movie which gained immense popularity in the South when they were released in 1936 and 1939, respectively. Elements like this not only lend the story a distinctly Southern flavor, but cultural references show the importance of the time period as well.

Additionally, beginning in the late 1920s writers like O'Connor became some of the first Southerners in history to openly portray the South in a bad (or even questionable) light. They began to question their world honestly in an unprecedented fashion, and the result is the finest literature ever seen in that region, and some of the finest in the nation's history as well. O'Connor examined many of the same subjects that her contemporaries were examining: the poverty-stricken, socially backward country people of the region. But rather than attributing their condition to any economic or social trends, she blamed an unfulfilled longing for God's grace. O'Connor's own religious notions of good and bad approaches to things like prayer and Christ, and her views on states of grace are very obvious in "Good Man," particularly near the end.

The grandmother's religion is portrayed as something which she has never really thought about, only used like a charm or a magic spell, and now it has ceased working for her. "Pray, pray" she tells The Misfit (O'Connor 149), and then later "If you would pray [. . .] Jesus would help you" (O'Connor 150). Still later, she is almost entirely unable to speak: "She found herself saying, 'Jesus. Jesus,' meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing" (O'Connor 151).

Finally, when everything else has failed, she is reduced to a half-hearted denial. "'Maybe He didn't raise the dead,' the old lady mumbled, not knowing what she was saying" (O'Connor 152). Then, her mind clears for an instant, she has her epiphany. Experiencing true charity for perhaps the first time ever she reaches towards someone else in the midst of her own troubles (almost certainly for the first time), and she is dead almost immediately.

The Misfit, too, addresses the topic of religion, something he seems to have thought about too much. His style of oratory as he speaks to the grandmother is vaguely reminiscent of evangelical preaching, and he claims to have been a gospel singer (among many other things) at some time in the past. When the grandmother asks him why he doesn't pray, he claims to be doing all right by himself. We soon learn that he believes that "Jesus thown [sic] everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn't committed any crime [. . .] I call myself The Misfit because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment" (O'Connor 151).

Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead [. . .] and he shouldn't have done it. He thown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can - by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness (O'Connor 152).

The Misfit cannot believe in anything he hasn't seen for himself, and there is no way for him to have seen whether or not Christ's claims are true, therefore he cannot believe. But he is haunted by the thought that it might be true, and the conflict is tearing him up. In the meantime, as he concludes at the end of the story, "It's no real pleasure in life" (O'Connor 153).

Posted by Jared at December 12, 2005 11:29 AM | TrackBack