“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” 837redemptive power of storytelling. The story of Linda
is his way of “dreaming Linda alive”; the entire novel
is his way of dreaming his friends from Vietnam
alive. And finally, the entire effort is “Tim trying
to save Timmy’s life with a story.” Innocence may
be born of ignorance and lost through experience
and knowledge, but the hope of innocence is always
available to be reclaimed.
Michael Little
o’CoNNor, FLaNNEry “a Good
man is Hard to Find” (1955)
Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to
Find” was first published in 1955 as part of the
author’s second work, a story collection of the same
title, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. The short story
is about a family road trip in the southern United
States that ends with the death of all six family
members at the hands of an escaped convict, the
Misfit, and his accomplices. The central character
of the story is the grandmother who, despite her
difficult personality (which O’Connor emphasizes
throughout the story), is touched by grace and thus
acts graciously, immediately preceding and in one
sense causing her own death.
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is one of
O’Connor’s most widely read and also most often
taught works, as it beautifully exemplifies the hall-
marks of her fiction. Her interest in the grotesque
is central to this story, which manages to treat
violence and humor alongside each other to great
effect, forcing the reader to engage with the message
of her work. Equally important is O’Connor’s ability
to capture the people, language, and landscapes of
the American South on the pages of her work. Ulti-
mately, this story, like the rest of O’Connor’s fiction,
focuses on the religious questions that were central
to her as a Catholic. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
is a powerful apologetic for a Christian faith that
leads to transformed lives rather than empty reli-
gious ceremonialism.
Wiebke Omnus
FamILy in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is a short story
about a family road trip with a tragic outcome.
O’Connor carefully sketches and underlines the
family dynamic between the travelers, and she also
introduces a completely different notion of family
through the inclusion of the Misfit, the man who
has them murdered. Family, then, is not only central
to the story as it unfolds, but the concept of family
itself is also transformed and taken to an entirely
different level as the narrative progresses toward a
pivotal moment of grace.
Family ties are fundamental in “A Good Man Is
Hard to Find:” The central character, for example,
whose perception shapes the story, is known as “the
grandmother,” and thus she is defined in relation
to the other characters rather than by a name. The
reader immediately learns that “Bailey was the son
she lived with, her only boy.” Similarly, Bailey’s wife
is referred to as “the children’s mother,” and the
youngest member if the family is simply “the baby”;
only Bailey and the two older children, John Wesley
and June Star, are actually called by their names.
The family is closely linked and constantly inter-
acting: The grandmother gives Bailey and his wife
parenting tips, which they disregard, and the chil-
dren are, to varying degrees, disobedient and disre-
spectful toward their elders. While the grandmother
insists that during her day “children were more
respectful. . . . People did right then,” it is important
to note that there is no hostility in their relation-
ships, which shows, for example, in the description
of the grandmother holding the baby or her telling
the older children a story about her suitors. The
family is a complete entity in itself. June Star, the
family’s daughter, is very vocal about not wishing to
be adopted into the family of Red Sam and his wife,
the couple who run “The Tower.”
The encounter with the Misfit and his accom-
plices challenges the established family dynamic,
however. As the grandmother begins conversing
with the man whom she recognizes to be the
escaped convict, she asks the Misfit about his fam-
ily: “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a
bit like you have common blood. I know you must
come from nice people!” The Misfit replies: “God
never made a finer woman than my mother and my
daddy’s heart was pure gold”; however, the reader
eventually learns that The Misfit was convicted of
murdering his father: “It was a head-doctor at the