Compare And Contrast The Misfit And The Grandmother

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Recommended: Modern society vs traditional society

In the story both The Misfit and the grandmother are misfits. They both have certain things that make them not fit in the modern society of the story. The grandmother who is old and traditional. The Misfit who is a criminal. This makes the irony between the Misfit killing the grandmother even stronger. The grandmother is an old woman who believes that the ways of the world should be kept the same and not change. She calls a black child ‘pickaninny’ and has many references to “back in her day.” She has very traditional ways and values. She dresses very fancy and proper in a nice dress while the mother in the story wears pants which are not considered to be ladylike. She dresses this nicely even though they are just going to be sitting in a car …show more content…

Sadly, she is not doing any of these things and she is very out of the times The Misfit is a convict who was convicted of killing his father but he does not remember doing so and he was put in prison for it. He later he escaped and he is on his way to Florida which is exactly where the family is going and where the grandmother is trying to tell them not to go. The Misfit named himself a misfit because he knew that the crime he was accused of did not fit him and he did not remember committing the crime. The Misfit does not fit in with society because of the fact that he is a convict and he will always be viewed as one no matter how much time passes. He is on a mission to escape to Florida but he comes across the family and the grandmother when they crash their car in the woods. He has his friends that are with him shoot the whole family and then he shoots the grandmother himself after talking with her for a while. Before he kills the grandmother, she asks him if he prays and if he believes in God and heaven. She says that she can tell that he is a good man and that he would never shoot a lady. She is trying every tactic to keep herself alive and to keep the Misfit from doing any harm to her. All of this talking only stalls the process of him killing her and he still kills her in the

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    In A Good Man is Hard to Find, the grandmother and the Misfit both experience a life-changing event that leads to them having a clear understanding of who they should truly be. After the Misfit kills the rest of the family, the grandmother is left alone with the Misfit in the ditch. Once she sees the Misfit wearing her now dead son’s shirt, she is reminded that the Misfit is no worse than she is (Whitt 47). She is reminded of her son because of the shirt, but this thought inspires an even deeper understanding and thought beyond being confused as to why he is wearing that shirt (Whitt 47-48). She goes as far as to tell the Misfit “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” (Whitt 47). She realizes that her beliefs and thoughts of the old fashioned southern social class structure that everyone must be good or they must be beneath an individual do not make sense or is applicable when faced with a serious event in life such as death (Whitt 47). The Misfit is taken back by what the grandmother has said to him and quickly shoots her three times without thought, as if by instinct, “as if a snake had bitten him” (Whitt 48). The truth that the grandmother speaks is too much for the Misfit to the point that he violently tries to reject it. Even though the grandmother is dead...

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