Nato Nozadze – Discussion Board #8

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor explores the conflict between appearance and reality. The grandmother appears to be a lady-like Christian woman, yet her encounter with The Misfit reveals that she does not believe in the central tenet of Christianity that Christ can raise the dead. In the story, there are two kinds of people. Those who know they are bad people and those who are bad people yet persist in believing they are good. The story depicts the impact of Christ on the lives of two seemingly disparate characters. One is a grandmother joining her son’s family on a trip to Florida. The grandmother makes the mistake of thinking that her own moral qualities are self-evident. At the end of the story, it is the grandmother who is seen as attaining grace. She attains it at her moment of death. She reaches out and recognizes the Misfit as her child. It is noted that throughout the story, it is the grandmother who advocates for the Christian faith.
Both the grandmother and the Misfit are portrayed as stereotypes throughout the story, but their final encounter changes them. The grandmother’s journey from spiritual blindness to the realization of her own sins allows her to affect hopeful change in even the most despicable, unrepentant character, the Misfit. The author of this short story purposefully uses the two character types represented by the grandmother and the Misfit to show that anyone can change, as both characters, to varying degrees, represent humanity in all of its sinfulness. Looking carefully at the final encounter in the story, grace, an incredibly important concept for Flannery O’Connor, is shown to operate in both of these characters, presenting them with the possibility of change. Change through the delivery of grace is possible in anyone, as the story seems to suggest.
The author used the story in order to demonstrate the transformative power of human compassion and grace. Transformations of the two character stereotypes, which are embodied by the grandmother and the Misfit, are used to get across the story’s message.