In the story of Flannery O’Connor “A good man is not easy to find” at first glance, you can see the story of a not very close-knit family that was unlucky enough to run into a maniac in the middle of a dirt road somewhere in Tennessee. From the very beginning of the story, we understand that something terrible is going to happen. “Chekhov’s gun” in the form of a message that a dangerous criminal has escaped from prison does not bode well for the whole family, which is going to a long journey. The whole story seems to slow down, leading us to that very tragic moment.
The protagonist of the story is the grandmother of the family. Loving to manipulate the family and an extremely superficial lady. In the end, because of her love of manipulation, and doing as she wants, the whole family ends up in a fatal situation.
If we consider this story from the point of view of an ancient Greek tragedy, then it has undeniable similarities. In the end, the protagonist must die, and through sufferings finds catharsis. According to the author, she uses violence to bring the hero back to reality, to catharsis. And the antagonist finally says: “If it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
So what is the story about? From the articles of this week we can see that there are different interpretations. One of them, as mentioned above, she finally receives her sight, clears herself before the death and grace descends on her and she touches the outcast, as the author says, “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…”.
First, I want to say that reading the story caused me a storm of emotions, extremely mixed emotions, indignation, fear and anger. And I’d like to express my feelings about that. It seems to me that what happened between the grandmother and the “prophet” can hardly be called a blessing.
I think that this story is about the fact that evil exists, and very often it triumphs. I definitely felt it when reading the story. And in real life, we often see pure evil. But how to treat it? The story also often touches religious aspects. After all, it is religion, and in our case the Bible, that gives us a moral measure and orders good and evil. And it seems to me that the author is trying to rethink the current approach to it. It’s not enough to ask the killer to pray, you need to find another way out.
Also, evil masterfully finds an excuse for itself. Evil has suffered, it has had a difficult childhood. We see all this even today. I will refrain from today’s examples, but the Misfit is an excellent personification of the Third Reich (reparations, the attitude of the rest of Europe as a misfit after the First World War) in my opinion.
As a result, what this work makes me overthink, that “kind missionary work” may no longer work, and through the cruelty of the story, we must return to reality, understand that evil is real and we need to be able to deal with it. How? Using the example of grandmother’s final conversation, we see exactly how this should not be done.
3 thoughts on “Amalia Lima Discussion 8”
You touched on the grandmother manipulating the whole family and leading them to their doom. Before I realized they ran into the Misfit, I was so annoyed by the grandmother’s actions and comments even up until the crash. See did press her son to take a detour and got all the kids involved. Even when the crash happened, she knew she was wrong and tried to select that this was her fault. My emotions changed once I realized the Misfit was in their presence. Now I went from annoyance to fear and pity. Right up until the end the grandmother was trying to talk her way out of it, but it was no use. He had already decided he would kill her once he laid eyes on her. I imagine him even listening to her was just a game of cat and mouse. What an unexpected turn of events.
I liked what you said about evil and the morals measures behind it. It makes it feel like good and evil go hand in hand. Without evil we would have no distinction of what is good and vise versa. You mentioned “missionary work” and I know exactly what you mean because the grandmother took a very pastor-like approach by offering God as deliverance for The Misfit. To me this is a very typical and played out approach because what if people are innately just evil and they can’t be saved and your response builds off of that idea.
Amalia, I appreciate your description of the emotions you felt reading this story, especially your mention of indignation. You are not the only reader of this story who does not buy into the author’s claim of goodness in this story. In her essay, she speaks of redemptive grace, which many readers who are not religious, object to. Some critics maintain that there is not one shred of goodness in the story. Of course, O’Connor also writes that she knows this. I think a reader does have to believe in these “Christian mysteries,” such as grace and redemption, to accept this view of this very violent story. Yet you have still identified elements in the interior of this story in your very good discussion of evil and how to—or how not to—confront it.