This story “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” in its interior is about suspense and karma. The suspense is all in how he keeps the old woman on her toes wondering if she will live or die. He is toying with her the whole time as if attempting to show a false sense of a moral dilemma about whether he would kill her or not, knowing full well the whole time she was dead from the start as soon as she crossed his path. The karma is in how the old lady’s manipulative words finally didn’t get her what she wanted and actually ended with her family dying because of her letting it slip that she recognized him as the misfit. It was also a lesson to show the old lady not to be so judgemental and in the end that judgement bites her in the butt and at the last moment she finally sees that judging people like she has was wrong and sees him as someone as her own child just gone down the wrong path.
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4 thoughts on “Angela Gertsovich Week 8 Discussion”
Hi Angela, I agree with your interpretation of the grandmother. I too could only see her demise as karma for her ignorance and selfishness. She manipulated others to get what she wanted, and when failed did her best to be difficult. She is the cause of her family’s murder, and her epiphany at the end served no purpose in saving her life.
Karma is one important interior that happened in the story because her manipulated ways got her to this point. The old lady tries to manipulate everyone around her to get what she needs. In the beginning of the text she brings up not wanting to travel to Florida because of the misfit killing and the care of her family’s safety. The old lady lied she wanted to visit Tennessee to see family. She convinced her family to take a detour which led them to death and her in the hands of the misfit.
Hi, Angela I very much agree with you, it’s her own karma she’s being away too selfish, superficial, small-minded, ignorant, and hypocritical anything you can think fit with her, just a spoiled old woman thought everything will go her way. Which results in the death of her son’s family.
I love this interpretation Angela! I agree with where it originates from; the suspense within the dialogue that took place between the Misfit and the grandmother, and the idea that karma is what brought about the death of the grandmother and her family. What I like most about your interpretation is it makes me ponder deeper on the concept of karma and suspense in this literature. The suspense between the grandmother and The Misfit is quite prominent in the story, to me that is not beneath the surface. On the interior, I believe the suspense and the author’s ability to make you question why this would happen to the grandmother and her family (which you deem a result of karma), acts as distraction to the real depth of the story. If karma for having a narrow mind and being manipulative as a citizen with not much influence outside of their own life, is getting you and your entire innocent family murdered, then what is to be said of what The Misfit deserves as karma? I believe if the author wanted to enhance the concept of karma the story would have been told from the perspective of the Misfit, and therefore where you see karma I see more dramatic irony. Where you see suspense between the grandmother and the Misfit, I notice the author trying to broaden your perspective to the situation at hand in a way that contradicts the average interpretation, just as the last moments of life allowed for the grandmother’s perspective to broaden in a way that went against her character.