The author Flannery O’Conner uses meanings and examples of grace to create an extreme depth into her short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. O’Conner herself was a very religious person when her father died that made her even more religious. In “A Good Man” a family of a gracious grandmother and a loud, difficult family go on a road trip. During a detour the family runs into “The Misfit” and his gang. The entire family gets murdered and The Misfit leaves the grandmother for last. The grandmother tries to show The Misfit that there is still good in him.
Despite the violence in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the randmother still tries to change the Misfits views of life and show him the idea of Grace. The example of grace is used in the story multiple times through the grandmother. The literal definition of grace is the love and mercy given to us by God because God desires us to have it not because of anything we have done to earn it. What that basically means is God and his love for his people is unconditional after all the sins and crimes the human race commits.
Forgiving someone for something they did wrong to you but, this being in the most extreme weather case possible dealing with God and sins. “Grace is imply a concern with the human reaction to that which, instant by instant, gives life to the soul. ” (Ochshorn). Grace can be shown through anyone whether it be as small as a worker being kind and courteous to a disrespectful customer to something as vast and miraculous as the Lord for giving all sins. Grace is definitely the most important thing to remember throughout your day.
It does not even matter if someone is religious everyone has something inside of them that has at least a little bit of grace. O’Conner has said herself that she “saw the shallow complacency of an increasingly highly rationalized and echnological society and felt peoples need to rediscover faith” (Dinneen). O? Conner was dissatisfied with how technological the society was getting and thought that people need to find the lord. In her stories “O’Conner speaks of her catholicism and its expression in her fiction, she is clear headed, eloquent and convincing”(Ochshorn).
O’Conner is very bold about her religion but is not up front the reader has to dig deep and discover its use. Half of the short story has violence in it. The Misfit and his gang kill half of the grandmothers family then, proceeds to kill the other half. Throughout that whole process he grandmother keeps insisting that the misfit is a good person. Any normal person whose entire family has just been murdered would have been scared and panicking but the grandmother stays calm and says “I know you are a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you come from nice people” (O’Conner).
Even after saying all of these nice comments about how the misfit is a nice man, the misfit still kills the grandmother with no trouble at all. O’Conner made sure she “focuses her story on what is sinister in The Misfit” (Ochshorn). By doing so O’Connor really captures The Misfits cruel way of killing the grandmother. After the grandmother’s generosity and acceptance The Misfit still killed her. After God’s forgiveness his people still sin. Grace is used as “the uneasy cloak O’Conner designed to cover and justify the violence in the story” (Ochshorn). Grace can overcome even the worst of the worst.
After reading about the murderous Misfit and all of the crime and death what the reader takes away is how much the grandmother repeated how The Misfit is a good person. The reader remembers the forgiveness in the grandmother’s heart and what she dies for. The take away from the entire story is the grandmothers kind heart The Grandmother thinks of herself as “a good christian woman who believes in all the conventional platitudes” (McFarland). She has a lot of expectations and she is not afraid to show them. She expects the good in the misfit. She also expects that the misfit would not kill her and to no one’s surprise he does with no remorse.
The grandmothers “final gesture to The Misfit might have began a process which would turn him into the prophet he was meant to become” (Ochshorn). The grandmother thought The Misfit could become something he’s not. But she still tried no matter what the misfit did> She still tried after he killed every ingle one of her family members. Even all the way up to seconds before her death she is still trying to change the misfits views and she dies trying. The grandmother expects so much of The Misfit that “she will be able to reach out to even the murderous Misfit as if he is one of her own children”(Evans).
The grandmother accepts The Misfit like God forgives sins from all no matter what crime. In the moment the grandmother does not even think about how The Misfit has just killed her entire family The grandmother is a major example of grace. She believes in the good of even the murder of her entire family. She ears the horrific screams of her family and remains calm asking a misfit to pray. She also shows a lot of forgiveness when her family was killed she didn’t show hatred she just told misfit to pray and continue telling him that he was a nice person and insisting that he had good morals.
Grace is God showing forgiveness and love. The Grandmother keeps insisting that the Misfit is a good person and that he could never shoot a lady. She even mentions that he should not call himself a misfit because he is good at heart. At the end of the story the grandmothers “gesture of compassion throws everything off balance”(Evans). When everything turns gruesome and dark the grandmother is the beam of God’s light shining down. When reading the story the reader should be on the “lookout for such things as the action of grace in the Grandmother’s soul, and not for the dead bodies”(Ochshorn).
If any quote could explain this short story most it would be that one. The grandmother’s faith and representation of grace is stronger that any sin committed, or life taken. Even the title of this story can be broken down to discribe it. It is broken down by ” A Good Man perhaps meaning Christ himself, is hard to find in the sense that faith in the esurrection can be a difficult gulf for non believers or agnostics to cross over” Even through the struggles of her family dying grandmother still remains calm and tries to show the misfit grace.
Grace is God’s forgiveness towards all the sinners and the grandmother died spreading grace to other people. She is a major example of grace due to her forgiveness and remorse. The Grandmother tries to show The Misfit and his gang a meaning for his life through God. Just like Flannery O’Conner herself says she wants to see people understand faith and gain a deeper meaning to the short story.
