The Good and the Bad of "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Here is the text of "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

This story plays with the ideas of good and bad. What seems to be "good" at first is actually bad, while what is bad doesn't seem so bad, but not quite good, and does anyone even seem good in the first place, etc? We ask ourselves these questions when reading.

O'Connor sets the stage for what seems like a Norman Rockwell painting: A family about to take a fun, yet dysfunctional little roadtrip down to Florida, with a whining granny and some sassy little kids. It's good. Yet, the great Southern lifestyle is turned into a nightmare. The grotesque. What we think was good was actually so very bad.

The good:

1. Red Sam
Red Sam is a "good man." He asks the family why he let 2 boys charge their gas, and the grandmother replies that he did it "because he's a good man." This judgment is only based on the fact that he trusted two strangers, not on any other aspect of his character. How would the grandmother know if he's good or not? She hardly knows him at all.
The grandmother is shallow, we can definitely say by reading the story, so her assessment of Red Sam is shallow as well. She lives to perform her age-old etiquette. Think: Southern belle past her prime. What she said to Red Sam was just a formality. The grandmother is a pro when it comes to manipulation and faking.

2. The family
The family is a huge element of Southern culture, to be sure. This whole story challenges the "Norman Rockwell"esque idea of the family and its function. Nobody really likes each other in this family. What is conventionally considered "good," really isn't so good after all.
The family members only tolerate each other.

If "family" is a means of describing prescribed human interaction, then this is no family at all. They hardly communicate or relate to each other at all. Each is completely concerned with his or her own perspective and mindset, from the sassy little June Star, to the single-minded Bailey, to the selfish grandmother.

The only real familial moment occurs at the very end of the story. "She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, 'Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!' She reached out and touched him," but he shot her in the chest as soon as he felt her touch. The most profound human interaction of the whole story ironically happens when it is much too late. The Misfit gets it more than anyone when he says, "She would of been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." Only when threatened with death does the grandmother reach outside of herself at all.


3. The "good old days"
The grandmother lives in her past. She and Red Sam talk about the times when you could have your screen door unlocked. The old days were "good." When the grandmother thinks of an old house that she'd like to see again so that she can remember some of those old days, she manipulates the family into letting her go see it. Here comes the irony! The house she was thinking of wasn't anywhere near the dirt road they were traveling on, and so her realization leads to their car accident, which leads to all of their deaths. Good one, grandma. The good old days were a myth! The house she imagined wasn't anywhere near where she had originally thought. Her memories betrayed her, which shows that the good old days were maybe not so good after all. Maybe they were just old.

4. Southern Gentility and Etiquette
As aforementioned, the grandmother relies heavily on her idea of social etiquette. Her first plea to the Misfit is "You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" This seems so ridiculous, but her instinct is to fall back on etiquette to protect her. The grandmother has done this her whole life! But... no southern social tradition can save her.