The Concept of Grace in Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

     Flannery O’Connor is known as one of America’s best Southern Writers, having published two novels, thirty two short stories, and variety of essays and literary criticism. Her work is southern-centric, focusing on detailed descriptions of usually dark characters and their path to redemption, whether realized or not. That is the case with A Good Man is Hard to Find , published in 1955. It is a story of a family, led by the matriarchal Grandmother, who find themselves at the violent end of the Misfit, mainly due to the Grandmother’s insistence of visiting a favorite home from her childhood past. It was through her interactions with the Misfit that the reader eventually witnesses the story as redemptive, focusing on God’s grace given in the end to the Grandmother, and the acknowledgement by the Misfit of the imbalance of good and evil in the world.

     The story opens up in Georgia as a family readies themselves for a vacation to Florida. The city is nameless, but it is most likely set sometime after World War II in the 1940’s; while talking to Red Sammy, Grandmother mentions she blames Europe for the way things are, and that “ the way Europe acted you would think we were made of money” (par. 43), alluding to the financial aid American gave Europe after the war. The point of view is third person limited; giving the readers a chance to judge all characters based on their actions and not on a first person, biased account of thoughts and feelings. This point of view also offers us a glimpse into the mind of Grandmother, where the “limited” function of third person is played out. A good example is with Grandma’s view of Bailey’s wife – unnamed, thus generic, bland, and ultimately of low class in her eyes. Finally, the tone of the story is detached. O’Connor offers us a sequence of events and descriptions but does not inject her biased opinion in the story, allowing the readers to make their own determination of the story.

     There are a few key characters in A Good Man is Hard to Find, including the main protagonist in the Grandmother. Other characters include Bailey, her son, John and June, her grandchildren, and The Misfit. The two unnamed characters include Bailey’s wife and the little baby, both of which are flat characters having little to no dialogue in the story. Their main purpose is to show innocence through their physical description, as is the case with the children’s mother “whose face was as broad and innocent as cabbage” (par. 2). In contrast to the dullness of the two unnamed females is Bailey, the dutiful son, who is pushed around by his mother and ultimately “drives” the family to their death under his mother’s direction. The two children, June Star and John Wesley, are brats, self-absorbed, and annoying. At the beginning of the story both children argue with their Grandmother, who doesn’t want to go to Florida on the family vacation. June Star says that Grandma “wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day,” (par. 4) while John Wesley is simply described as a “stocky child with glasses” (par. 3) who has normal interests and takes part in normal activities.

      The two main characters (the Grandmother and the Misfit) are central to the story’s theme and purpose. It is through the actions and beliefs of the Grandmother, and the interaction between her and the Misfit, that the purpose and concept of God’s Grace is made clear. The Grandmother initially “didn’t want to go to Florida” (par. 1), as she was attempting to change the family’s plans to Tennessee. Her selfish needs were masked with fake concern of the Misfit, who was “headed toward Florida,” stating to Bailey that she “wouldn’t take [her] children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it” (par. 1); she couldn’t answer to her own conscious if something happened. This is the first glimpse given of the conflict to come. The Grandmother is dressed impeccably with white cotton gloves and a “navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print” (par. 12). She is presented as someone steeped in tradition and class standing, continually bringing up references to “good” people and their socio-economic status.

      To highlight the human condition and the ever-present gift of God’s grace, O’Connor utilized a variety of symbols. To foreshadow the pending deaths of Grandmother’s family the story offers three clues. To start, in one of the first descriptions of the passing landscape, the Grandmother pointed to an old plantation and the “old family burying ground” (par. 22) that belonged to it. Secondly, as the family was driving away from Red Sammy’s Barbeque, they passed the town of “Toombsboro” (par. 45), which prompted Grandmother to wake and suggest they visit an old house she remembers from her childhood. Finally, the most blatant symbol of death is the Misfit’s car, which is “big black battered hearselike automobile” (par. 69) driving towards the stranded family.

     The main theme, expressed through a variety of symbols, is humanity’s relationship with God and God’s grace. Although Grandmother portrays herself as a good, model Christian, the story leads most readers to understand that she is more concerned with the outward appearance of Christianity and charity versus the actual motives and inner beliefs behind it. The Grandmother’s concern with how she was dressed, so that “anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once she was a lady” (par. 12) is just one of the more glaring examples of the façade she had created for herself. Her interactions with the children are terse and, based on the children’s comments to her, their relationship is strained. The very fact that her description of Bailey’s wife as generic and bland is another pointed reference to the Grandmother’s upbringing and feeling of being superior to most.

      In the lead up to the story’s climax, the family had an accident, caused by the Grandmother’s cat, and end up in a ditch on the side of the road. As the family was driving down the dirt road, on the way to her remembered house, the Grandmother had a horrible feeling “that the house she had remembered so vividly was not in Georgia but in Tennessee” (par. 65). This mistake set into motion a series of events that ultimately leads to everyone’s death. We are then introduced to the Misfit, who happens along and discovers the deserted family, surrounded by “woods, tall and dark and deep” (par. 65). As the men exit the vehicle the Grandmother had a “feeling that the bespectacled man was someone she knew” (par. 74). Up until this point the Grandmother’s selfishness and mistakes have caused no real harm, just mishaps. It was at the moment that she recognizes the Misfit that we finally have proof of the family’s pending doom. The Misfit comments that “it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me” (par. 84) – if the Grandmother had not recognized anything the family would have been saved. While each of the family members are escorted to the woods to be shot, Grandmother pleas with the Misfit, continually bringing up his upbringing and the fact he does not look “like you have common blood”, she knows he “must come from nice people.” (par. 89). Even with the end near her relationship with others is based on image, quick judgment, and her need to recognize the common or un-common ancestry of people.

      It was not until shots rang out from the woods that the Grandmother started to realize that image and good blood had nothing to do with mercy and grace. She cries out “You’ve got good blood! I know you wouldn’t shoot a lady!” (par. 134) yet the Misfit’s crew has already killed women and children. In the final act of the Grandmother, where she accepts the duality of humanity within the Misfit, she reaches out and touches him, saying “you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” (par. 139). The Misfit sprang “back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times” (par. 139). The Grandmother’s act of kindness, the first instance in the story, was enough to make the man kill. There was no doubt on how the story would end, but it was with this moment of clarity that O’Connor expresses the theme of God’s grace. The Misfit acknowledges the women’s acceptance at the end saying that “She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life” (par. 143); she would have led the Christian life through action, not with image, if she had only understood life’s brief span.

      The theme of religiosity, of a person’s need to find and retain God while ultimately being hypocritical of the tenants of Christianity, is worthwhile in every respect. What makes this story a fine piece of literature is the use of dirtiness in O’Connor’s character and the paradoxes presented. For instance, the Misfit’s extreme politeness while killing the entire family, or the racial and prejudicial language of the Grandmother, although she is an avowed Christian. It is within the realm of understanding real people, with genuine feelings and both dark and light within their souls, that the author truly creates a sincere look at sin, salvation, and violence. O’Connor’s use of both flat and rich characters, while not giving them a Christian name, was a very effective technique reminiscent of the traditional allegorical story, where proper names were abandoned for more symbolic ones. The story was both efficient and successful in its purpose and effective in its use of literary technique.

     All of the elements of A Good Man is Hard to Find convey the ultimate question and answer – is God’s grace available to anyone and, if so, how is that achieved. As read in the final scenes, it was only through that last moment of sincere human connection that the Grandmother received grace and serenity. The Misfit remarks that the women would have been better if only she realized the shortness of human life. Ultimately she dies “in a puddle of blood with her legs crossed under her like a child’s and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky” (par. 140). It is within that smile, that childlike innocence, and the realization that life does have an end, that Flannery O’Connor achieved the goal - proving God’s grace is available to all and that through strong epiphanies, one could achieve it.