Theme Of A Good Man Is Hard To Find

Flannery O 'Connor 's “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a short story told in the third person. In the short story, a group of escaped convicts, led by a notorious leader called the Misfits murder a family because of a series of mishaps on the part of the Grandmother. The story centers singularly on the Grandmother; she is the character we were told most about. The Grandmother complains that she would rather go to Tennessee than Florida for vacation and she insists that her son, Bailey, take a detour that leads them to their deaths. She secretly brought her cat along which led her son to drive the car off the road when the cat leaped to his shoulders. Finally, she blurts out the identity of the murderer so that he has no choice but to murder them all. The short story introduces a quirky family and what appears to be a typical family car trip, but the story ends on a more philosophical note when the Grandmother attains a state of grace at the moment she realizes that the murderer is “one of her children.” (O’Connor 1295). However, in the short story the Grandmother and the Misfits are both receivers of grace. The story can be

In the story, the Misfit represents the new generation of young and religiously misguided people, and the Grandmother symbolizes the old generation which has grown somewhat distant from religion. The grandmother’s final act led to an occasion of grace. She dies in a pool of blood: “with her legs crossed under like a child’s and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky.” (O’Connor 1295). This depicts that in her last dying breath she found redemption. O’Connor uses the grandmother and the Misfit to show how grace and salvation are available to everyone. In the short story, no one is without sin but one can see that no one is beyond redemption