Lecture 24 A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery OConnor Objectives: After this lecture, you will understand the

following: 1. the main ideas, themes and conflicts of the story 2. OConnors use of the grotesque 3. OConnors use of epiphany 4. the debatable ending of the story

A. Flannery OConnor (1925 -1964) Flannery OConnor was born in Savannah, Georgia, but lived most of her life on a farm near Milledgeville, Georgia. OConnor attended the famed Iowa Writers Workshop, earning her MFA there in 1947. During the next years, she lived for a time in New York, where she began publishing her stories in major national magazines. By 1960, she was already becoming known as one of her generations finest (and most stylistically indelible) short story writers. OConnor learned when she was young that she had inherited a debilitating blood disease from her father, and so she spent most of the latter half of her life on the family farm. During her years, she published several story collections and two novels Wise Blood (1952 later made into a film), and The Violent Bear It Away. Her stories contain some of the most memorable characters and situations who have appeared in any short fiction over the last century, and as a short story writer, she has had few equals over the past sixty years in America. For more information on Flannery OConnor, please consult the following: http://sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu/~jmitchel/flannery.htm http://mediaspecialist.org/ http://kirjasto.sci.fi/flannery.htm B. A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1) Plot The grandmother of a lower-class southern family tries to persuade her son not to go on a trip to Florida. She is afraid they might run into an escaped murderer nicknamed The Misfit. The family, however, does go on the trip. The children are brats and misbehave, and the grandmother chatters and behaves like someone not much older than the children herself. The family stops at a restaurant run by a man named Red Sammy Butts, the Red Sammy and the grandmother talk about world politics. The family resumes its trip. The

grandmother persuades her son, Bailey, to take a particular route, but when she realizes that its the wrong route, her sudden jump causes the family to have an accident. At this point, the Misfit and his two accomplices appear. The grandmother recognizes him, which causes the Misfit to direct his accomplices to begin killing the family members one by one. The Misfit and the grandmother converse, and he reveals to her his belief that one must either follow Jesus or reject him completely, since Jesus thown everything off balance. When the grandmother -- in a heretofore unseen moment of compassion for someone outside herself -- reaches out and touches the Misfit, he kills her, telling his two companions that killing is no pleasure in life. (2) Main Ideas, Subjects, Themes a. religion and religious belief b. human nature and evil c. Southern attitudes and behavior d. violence (3) Main Conflicts a. reality vs. illusion b. Christian belief vs. nonbelief c. innocence vs. experience d. comedy vs. tragedy (4) Analysis Flannery O Connor and the Grotesque Once, in an interview, Flannery OConnor referred to William Faulkner and said, everyone gets off the tracks when the big train comes through. In regards to the short story, however, few trains were any bigger than OConnor, who is generally regarded now as one of the 20th centurys great masters of the short story form. Though OConnor wrote quite proficiently in the novel form, she is best known for her short fiction. OConnors short stories are almost immediately recognizable because of her distinct style. Besides her mastery of a strong, acerbic and commanding narrative voice (which appears in virtually all of her stories), she also combined a high level of humor in her work -- or black comedy, as it were -- with a frequent dose of violence. Her stories involve caricaturized versions of lower-class stereotypical southerners populating the Christ-haunted South, and her principal themes were spiritual and religious in nature, as she explored human nature in the light of her own native Catholicism. Often her stories involve a central prideful protagonist whose downfall in the story sets up the theme and involves some form of OConnors unique use of the epiphany (which, you will recall from Joyce, was a moment in a story where a character came to a sudden

moment of enlightenment or instant insight). OConnor has also been credited often with having made extensive use of the grotesque. In her work, the grotesque is a technique in a story which reveals the spiritual, psychic (and sometimes physical) deformity of the character (or set of characters). OConnor was a scathing critic of the soft feel-good Protestantism she saw around her. Often in her stories, the central character is an older person (often a female) whose self-congratulatory sense of righteousness blinds the character to his or her own spiritual blindness and state of damnation. The stories often involve moments when such characters come face to face with their own shortcomings, and must learn immediately to deal with those shortcomings. The Family in A Good Man is Hard to Find A Good Man is Hard to Find is arguably OConnors most famous short story. Structurally, it involves all of OConnors main devices -- the use of both comedy and violence; the spiritually deficient protagonist; the particular agent in the story who brings Gods judgment or attention upon the protagonist via a specific action; the use of the epiphany; the broad-brush comic treatment of southern stereotypical characters. At the center of the story is a nameless old woman -- known in the story as the grandmother -- whose family is taking a trip to Florida, apparently as a vacation. As the story begins, the grandmother is trying to advise her son, Bailey, not to go because a convicted murderer known only as The Misfit has escaped from prison and is now on the loose. The grandmother fears that the family will run into him - a fear which strikes us, at the beginning of the story, as a simple irrational worry of a busy-minded old woman. The grandmothers family is depicted as lower-class southern white trash. The mother in particular comes in for the narrators excoriating disdain: Bailey didnt look up from his reading so [the grandmother] wheeled around then and faced the childrens mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the tops like rabbits ears (1048). This is one of the few times we even see the mother (also nameless) in the story. Her invisibility is partly the result of her not having an important role in the story, but also partly to put her in contrast to the grandmother, whose sense of need to be at the center of attention and activity is particularly childlike and self-centered during the first two-thirds of the story. (One might also argue, distantly, that the mothers invisibility could be OConnors off-handed critique of the domesticity many women accepted without question in the 1950s).

OConnor balances the mother out with two of the familys three children, June Star and John Wesley (there is also a baby, who does not figure importantly in the story). In OConnors work names are almost always important in the story. John Wesley gets his name both from the founder of the Methodist faith, and from a famous western gunfighter, John Wesley Hardin. This combination creates an interesting twist in how we see the character. His sister, June Star, possesses a typical southern double name (ie. Billy Bob). OConnor goes to considerable lengths during the first half of the story to depict the children as complete brats. They are rowdy, and disrespectful to the point of being hateful: Lets go through Georgia fast so we wont have to look at it much, John Wesley said. If I were a little boy, said the grandmother, I wouldnt talk about my native state that way. Tennessee has the mountains and Georgia has the hills. Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground, John Wesley said, and Georgia is a lousy state, too. You said it, said June Star (1049). The Structure of A Good Man Is Hard to Find This story is divided into three sections: part one, from the beginning of the story to the arrival at Red Sammys roadside restaurant; part two, the section taking place at Red Sammys until the familys accident; and part three, the arrival of the Misfit and subsequent deaths of the family members. OConnor uses the first section to acquaint us with the family (who are not presented sympathetically or in any positive light to speak of). She is especially focused on the grandmother, the storys protagonist. We can see immediately that the grandmother is, at heart, more or less a child herself in her contradictory behavior. Though she pleads with Bailey not to leave on vacation, the narrator tells us that when the family leaves the next morning, the grandmother is the first one in the car, ready to go (1048). That the grandmother is set in her ways is apparent by the fact that she takes her cat Pitty Sing, whom she includes because of her fear that the cat would miss her too much and . . .might brush up against one of the gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself (1049). The grandmother writes down the cars mileage because she thought it would be interesting to say how many miles they had been when they got back (1049). Later, when the children malign Georgia and Tennessee, the grandmother lectures them: In my time. . .children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. Spotting a black child, however, the grandmother drops immediately back into a childlike mode: Oh look at the cute little pickaninny! This section, and the one immediately following, establish the grandmother as a racist, and as a person who buys heavily into the gentile

mythology of the South (with much the same ironic twist we saw in Faulkners version of it in A Rose for Emily). Section Two of the story begins when the family stops at Red Sammys Barbecue restaurant to eat. One of the most amusing passages in the story occurs with OConnors bold-faced depiction of Red Sammys roadside signs. Though this part of southern culture is now largely gone, forty years ago, roadside signs pronouncing eating places or other matters were common in the south. The most popular of these were the famous serial Burma Shave signs (http://www.fiftiesweb.com/burma.htm), which usually strung a poetic quatrain out over a period of miles, with the final punchline followed by an advertisement for Burma Shave. It was also not unusual for travelers to encounter hellfire-andbrimstone religious messages (presumably from local preachers) mounted at roadside to trees, makeshift frames, and/or painted (usually by hand) on whatever material was available -- corregated tin, scrap iron, even ripped-out pieces of scrapped cars, like hoods or doors. The scene in Red Sammys serves in the story as an interlude between the familys first bout of travel and the climactic scene at the end. The scene also allows OConnor to indulge in some of the storys most pungent critical presentation of her characters and the foibles of the segment of populace these characters represent. This is particularly true in the scene where Red Sammy and the grandmother discuss world events and their meaning: Red Sam came in and told his wife to quit lounging on the counter and hurry up with these peoples order. His khaki trousers reached just to his hip bones and his stomach hung over them like a sack of meal swaying under his shirt. He came over and sat down at a table nearby and let out a combination sigh and yodel. You cant win, he said. You cant win, and he wiped his sweating red face off with a gray handkerchief. These days you dont know who to trust, he said. Aint that the truth. People are certainly not nice like they used to be, said the grandmother. .. A good man is hard to find, Red Sammy said. Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more. He and the grandmother discussed better times. The old lady said that in her opinion Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now. She said the way Europe acted youd think we were made of money and Red Sam said it was no use talking about it, she was exactly right. The children ran outside into the white sunlight and looked at the monkey sitting in the lacy chinaberry tree. He was busy catching fleas on himself and biting each one carefully between his teeth as if they were a delicacy (1052).

This important passage -- marked by OConnors savage humor and disdain -establishes several important elements in the story: one, it lampoons the tendency in many people to explain away complexities in terms of their own natural prejudices and easy explanations; two, it suggests that people like Red Sammy and the grandmother engaged in the thoughtless luxury of easy opinionating without much if any thought or experience behind it; and finally, in the acidic description of the children and the money biting fleas, it suggests OConnors apparent opinion about the evolution chain, and her characters close proximity in regards to our original Darwinian ancestors. Then the family embarks again on their trip. As they drive, the grandmother drifts into a nostalgic recollection about a house, with an alleged secret panel, which she had visited once when she was a young lady (1052). She suggests that the family visit -- a remark which draws a curt No from Bailey (who seems, throughout the story, to be a tense, no-nonsense father). The begging children convince Bailey to take a dirt road to the house. As they drive, however, a horrible thought -- that the house was actually in another state -- comes to the grandmother: The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner. The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Baileys shoulder. This sequence, in turns, causes Bailey to spin into an accident, which the children find exciting: Weve had an ACCIDENT! the children screamed in a frenzy of delight. But nobodys killed, June Star said with disappointment as the grandmother limped out of the car. . . (1053). The Misfit One of the great achievements of this story is the fact that even though OConnor mentions the Misfit at the very first of the story, we are nonetheless surprised later in the story when the Misfit actually does appear. OConnor makes excellent use of foreshadowing when she describes the Misfits car as a big black battered hearse-like automobile (1056) when it first appears. When the grandmother recognizes the Misfit (Youre the Misfit, she said. I recognized you at once!), he tells her, Yesm. . .but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadnt of reckernized me (1055). When it becomes apparent to the grandmother that the Misfit poses an immediate danger, she says, I know youre a good man. You dont look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people! Her reliance here on class-oriented stereotyping, however, has little appeal to the

Misfit: Nome, I aint a good man, he says, . . .but I aint the worst in the world , neither. As the Misfits helpers begin to shoot the family members individually, the Misfit describes himself: I was a gospel singer for awhile. . .I been most everything. Been in the arm service, both land and sea, at home and abroad, been twict married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet.. .I even seen a woman flogged . . .I never was a bad boy that I remember of. . .but somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary. I was buried alive (1056). The varied nature of the Misfits background, plus his more cerebral approach to his own criminal actions place him in direct contrast with his two helpers, Hiram and Bobby Lee, who seem to take great glee in their evil actions. At one point, the Misfit says, no pleasure but meanness (1058). Yet at the end of the story, when he himself has to murder the grandmother, he contradicts himself by saying that the killing is no real pleasure in life (1058). What seems to set the Misfit off rests in his philosophical and religious philosophy, which he imparts to the grandmother as his helpers ruthlessly murder the grandmothers family members in the woods (OConnor relies here on ancient Greek drama, where murders of important cast members often happen off-stage, which heightens the horrific dramatic effect). Jesus thown everything off balance, the Misfit tells the grandmother, after she implores him repeatedly to pray: Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead, The Misfit continued, and He shouldnt have done it. He thown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then its nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didnt, then its 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 (1058). The Misfits attitude towards Christ is a simplified, somewhat perverted version of the classic stance known as Pascals wager ie. the stance that the benefits of belief in God, even if God does not exist, outweigh the pitfalls of Gods potential nonexistence (so you might as well believe). The Misfits take on this classic argument is an inversion of this stance. The Misfit seems to be saying that a wager on Jesus untruthfulness (and Gods nonexistence) hence opens up the reality of an amoral world where any activity is theoretically as moral as any other activity, and so one might as well engage in meanness. It is interesting that the Misfit automatically concludes that meanness should be the logical moral behavior following an assumption, or conclusion, of Gods theoretical nonexistence. One can perhaps interpret his philosophy, however, as OConnors own stance toward the dominant existentialist philosophies of her time. In the post-WWII era, there was a great deal of debate about Gods

existence, in the face of the Holocaust and other atrocities of the war (as well as the new specter of nuclear annihilation that was suddenly hanging over everyones head). Because OConnor was a believing Catholic who viewed grace as essential to human salvation, she approached the notion of any system outside of Christianity promoting any idea of world redemption with considerable skepticism, if not outright derision. But the Misfits philosophy about Jesus obviously forms the crux of his life and decisions. But one reads his comments and studies his character with the awareness that the Misfit still seems somewhat unsettled about his own philosophy. His comment at the end of the story that killing constitutes no real pleasure in life suggests that he has not come to fully accept his own conclusions yet. The Grandmothers Epiphany For the grandmother, the ending of the story represents a moment where she attains the typical OConnor epiphany. Rousted out of her easy moralisms and her blindness by the reality of the murders of her family, she drops her platitudes a good man is hard to find and immediately attempts to appeal to the Misfit on moral grounds. She appeals to him on the grounds of class (I know you must come from nice people!), and when that fails, she appeals to him as a potential believer. The Misfit is, in fact, a believer, but his belief, in the grandmothers terms, is non-belief. He has anted his life on the gamble that Jesus is wrong, and that Christianity is built upon a falsehood or myth. His belief, in short, is in a Christ-less world where violence, murder, mayhem, theft, and other forms of evil are no less moral than any other form of behavior. The Misfit represents a classic theological view of life that morality requires a metaphysical first-cause; that moral actions are valueless unless they are based on the spiritual gold standard of Gods existence. The grandmother throughout the story has been a shallow, childlike character, but as her family is murdered and her fear is deepened, her character changes to reveal within her some inner compassion. Notice, for example, that her last act is to reach out and touch the Misfit, as she says, youre one of my babies. Youre one of my own children (1058). At that moment, the Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. When Bobby Lee says, of the grandmother, she was a talker, wasnt she, the Misfit says She would have been a good woman. . .if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life (1058). This enigmatic statement, again, suggests confusion on the Misfits part, since he recognizes the fact that the grandmother could have been a good woman.

A Good Man is Hard to Find as a Flawed Story? Critics have pointed to the ending of this story as being flawed. In A Good Man is Hard to Find: A Dissenting Opinion (Studies in Short Fiction. 1973 Mar; 10(2): pp. 199-204), for example, William Doxey argues that the story is flawed because a shift of point-of-view from the perspective of the grandmother to that of the Misfit muddles up the direction the story had been taking. I agree with this perspective, but I can add a bit more, since I agree that the story is flawed. For me, the flaw is both the result of the point-of-view shift and of OConnors use of the allegorical structure. Through the first two-thirds of the story, OConnor relies on what is essentially an allegorical structure for this story. Allegory makes use of characters who represent abstract or moral precepts or concepts. Though A Good Man is Hard to Find is not strictly allegorical, there is no doubt that OConnor clearly an author interested in moral themes intends for the grandmother to embody a moral point: ie. the point that blindness and acceptance of shallow belief leaves one vulnerable to the violent reality of the world itself. Likewise, we see that the family ends up in the danger that eventually kills them all because of the grandmothers decisions. Her desire to see the old house from her younger days, for example, puts them on the very dirt road where they encounter the Misfit. The Misfit is also allegorical a fact that is implied strongly by his name. OConnor makes clear the fact that he is a misfit in his description of his own past jobs and activities. He is not a clear evil character, but someone whose inner life has some ambiguity to it. OConnor seems to want to use him to shore up her apparent disdain for non-absolutistic philosophies about life. Though the Misfit has taken a strong decision against belief in the truthfulness of Christ, his belief is tempered by his own apparent sense of wavering at the end of the story. And so what we have is a story which, for two-thirds of the way, seeks to suggest one precept about activity and behavior and their relationship to Christianity. Then we are introduced to a character who allegorically embodies the ramifications of a moral universe devoid of Christ as its central feature. But the Misfits character does not ultimately prove or mean anything final in the story. I suspect that OConnor wished for him to serve as a model of wishy-washy humanism (or anti-humanism, as the case may be). But he emerges from the story as a character who finally lacks full definition. As an allegorical figure, he does represent the stance of a misfit in that he does not fit into any easy moral category. But the story fails to establish that his lack of category is a moral flaw.

If anything, it makes the Misfit more human, since few murderers in real life can be pegged as totally evil characters. And the Misfit would have to be totally evil for the allegory to be successful in the story as OConnor apparently wishes it to be. Nonetheless, these objections do not negate the power of this story as a cautionary tale with some unforgettable characters. The story does succeed in blending comedy and tragedy into a story which dramatizes the relationship between reality and illusion, and which shows us how quickly hum-drum life can turn deadly serious. Topics for Discussion Choose one of the following and discuss briefly 1. Do you find the grandmother annoying, amusing or sympathetic in the story? 2. Discuss OConnors depiction of the South. Do you see her presentation as being wholly critical, or does she have any sympathy for her characters? 3. Discuss the blend of humor and violence in the story. Does OConnor sufficiently prepare us for the mass murder at the storys end? Did you feel annoyed or insulted by it? 4. Discuss the Misfits comment about the grandmother that she would have been a good woman if there had been somebody there to shoot her at every minute of her life. Is he correct? What does he mean? 5. Discuss the Misfits approach to Christianity. Do you agree with him that there are only two paths? Or do you think there can be other conclusions?