Theme Of Loss And Redemption In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”

Discuss the theme of loss and redemption in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor.

Grandmother's Character Analysis

Critical Analysis on “A Good is Hard to Find”

Flannery O'Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” retains the theme of loss and redemption interwoven in very thread of this literary piece of work. In fact, a close perusal of O’Connor’s works will divulge that they generally reflect one theme or the other related to Catholicism being overtly religious at times (Wood). The frequent and scattered instances of violence in her novels and short stories rather act as medium of grace and redemption ushered by some divine entity in the form of humans. Being no exception to this, the cited piece of work also deals with loss and redemption of an aged woman, the Grandmother, a superficial and self-centered character who finds her redemption in the moment of close proximity to death (Basselin).

The long-drawn scenes at home or during the journey and the accident actually set the stage for the readers to be acquainted with the self-obsessed character of the Grandmother. The author to amplify the need of divine grace and redemption for the Grandmother has purposely carried this out. In the very first scene, the Grandmother is shown to manipulate kids, her own grandchildren to go on a vacation to the place of her choice east Tennessee instead of Florida. The ironic part of the story is probably when on many occasions, especially in the Red Sammy’s the Grandmother is seen extremely concerned with the fact that good people have become rare to find these days (Nadal). The entire ambience of the eatery, in reality is somewhat cynical and contemptuous of the present time reflecting the Grandmother’s own character who prefers to dwell in old times and think herself as the ideal representation of goodness (Moran). However, ironically, the definition of “good” for her lays more in appearance than in her innermost self. While leaving for the journey she is meticulously dressed to look like a woman of virtue. O’Connor sarcastically writes in this context, “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (O'Connor 426). Another instance of her manipulation occurs when she tries to convince the children and her son to go to a seemingly desolate house despite knowing in her mind that going over there may cause harm for them. Even in the hypothetical accident, for which she has been responsible indirectly the Grandmother do not even hesitate to carry out pretence; she hopes to be injured so that her son does not remember her fault and concentrates on her false injury. However, after the accident the disheveled appearance of the Grandmother especially her hat "still pinned to her head but the broken front brim standing up at a jaunty angle and the violet spray hanging off the side” exposes the superficiality of her flimsy values and the fragility of her essential character (O'Connor 430).

However, the theme of loss and redemption is most prevalent in the last scene where the Grandmother is left to encounter with the Misfit. This scene is infused with the Grandmother’s sheer selfish nature where she mostly lies, begs and even flatters to be saved from the imminent death (Stewart). Her repeated flattering of the Misfit despite having the apprehension that her family members might have been killed reiterates the need of her redemption from the moat of self-centeredness. She even pleads on the ground of being a lady, "I know you wouldn't shoot a lady!", so that by any means she can have the mercy of the portrayed evil character, the Misfit (O’Connor 434). Knowing the fact that her identification of the Misfit may prove perilous for her family, she fails to keep quiet and making the criminal utter in a rage “…it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me" (O'Connor 431). Most shockingly, she appears to be comfortable with the continuous occurrences of her family members being murdered around her and she, on the other hand still continues with the flattering conversation in the hope of being saved (O’Donnell). She resides in the realm of delusion that good nature has something to deal with lineage and that attempts to flatter the felon on that sensitive ground claiming, "You're not a bit common!" (O'Connor 432). Most of her actions stridently conflict with her proclaimed nature of goodness and probably the most sarcastic and ironic of them all is her insisting of the Misfit to "Pray, pray” (O’Connor 433). Quite ironically, the Grandmother identifies the Misfit here, as a sinned soul who is in need of redemption and keeps emphasizing that he should pray. However, the character as revealed through the course of story makes the readers cynical about the grandmother’s depth of understanding about divinity and grace (Wilson).

Encounter with the Misfit

There has been a lot of incongruity in the interpretation of the final moment of the Grandmother’s salvation, as most critics tend to disagree on the obscure lines uttered by the Grandmother "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" and her incomprehensible act of touching the shoulder of the Misfit to which the felon retaliates and shoots the Grandmother in a fit of sudden rage not once but thrice (O'Connor 434). As a positive sign of redemption, the Grandmother just prior to her death recognizes the truth that no such thing as pure goodness prevails on earth and that, every human being retains both goodness and evil inside him or her (Wilson and Stratman). This O’Connor accentuates as the moment of her salvation recovering the loss of her spirit of virtue and altruism, the essential prerequisites of Christianity by stating, “the grandmother's head cleared for an instant” (O’Connor 434). The sudden realization chanced upon the Grandmother on who the real misfit is leads to her salvation (McRobie).

O’Connor’s inclination towards ending a fictional work on a violent note does not, however hamper the significance of redemption in the story since she is bestowed salvation prior to her death (Nadal). Although many critics have doubted Grandmother’s true redemption opinionating that her act of touching her murderer and calling him her child is all pretence and that O’Connor uses redemption as an instrument to save her climax from being merely stained with bloodshed. However, from O’Connor’s perspective, people remain deliberately oblivious of death as inevitable and leave it as a mere abstraction. Therefore, they never pay enough consideration to their amoral life until death when in proximity with the same they become concerned about their afterlife and thereby, are rendered to realize the loopholes of their insubstantial values (Basselin). The same seems to be the case of the Grandmother when confronting the imminent death she begins to consider her actions so far and in a sudden moment of enlightenment cleared her head. Her mortal body has been described “like a child's and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky” signifying the completion of her redemption (O’Connor 434).  

The climax of this short story is impregnated with the merit of salvation in the sense that it signifies the redemption of not only the Grandmother but also of the uncompromising murderer, the Misfit. Both the murderer and the murdered here are sinned for different failings and transgressions that they have both knowingly and unknowingly committed and according to Christianity every sinner regardless of their extremity of sins deserve the divine grace. Being a writer, strictly adhering to the moral principles of Christianity she creates the opportunity for even the most sinned individual here to be redeemed (Driskell and Brittain). The indications of his redemption lie in his act of clearing the pair of glasses just after the bloodshed; the glasses here signify the simulated vision of him that he has developed due to his bitter experiences in life, particularly those that have driven him on the path of sins. Clearing of the glasses implies him getting rid of the sinful ways and the author herself admits that without them his eyes appear “pale and defenseless-looking” (O’Connor 434). Another attestation of his redemption is found when he forbids Bobby Lee to take pleasure in killings and significantly, in the concluding lines of the story, the Misfit is able to comprehend the concrete truth that "It's no real pleasure in life” (O’Connor 435). As a redeemed soul he acts more like a prophet and remarks that had the Grandmother endured a infliction of violence perpetrated on her she would have been the true symbol of goodness that she had to pretend all through her life (Hicks).

The conclusion of the story restates the author’s firm conviction on the Christian perspective of salvation and the plentiful unfortunate loss of lives have been intentionally accommodated in the story in order to embolden the message of redemption. As the Misfit mentions that, the Grandmother would have had the chance of being good “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life", hints at the fact the somewhere in the core she had been good. Now, as Christianity makes possibility of redemption for every sinner, neither the Grandmother nor the Misfit has been deprived and herein lies the triumph of Flannery O’Connor for her successful realization of the theme of loss and redemption.

Basselin, Timothy J. Flannery O'Connor. Baylor University Press, 2013.

Driskell, Leon V., and Joan T. Brittain. The eternal crossroads: the art of Flannery O'Connor. University Press of Kentucky, 2015.

Hicks, Ashley. Religion and Reality: Literature and Prophecy in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor. Diss. The University of North Carolina at Asheville, 2015.

McRobie, Heather. "Is Flannery O'connor A Catholic Writer?". the Guardian. N.p., 2017. Web. 10 Apr. 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/apr/22/fiction

Moran, Daniel. Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers. University of Georgia Press, 2016.

Nadal, Marita. "Jordan Cofer. 2014. The Gospel According to Flannery O’Connor: Examining the Role of the Bible in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction." Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies 38.2 (2016): 223-227.

O’Donnell, Angela Alaimo. "Poetry, the Power of the Pen, and the Redemption of Time." Christianity & Literature 65.2 (2016): 244-256.

O’Connor, Flannery.  “A Good Man is hard to Find.”The New Wascana Anthology: Poetry, Short Fiction, and Critical Prose. Eds. Medrie Purdham & Michael

Stewart, Kenneth J. "Book Review: Restoration through Redemption: John Calvin Revisited, edited by Henk van den Belt." Journal of Reformed Theology 9.2 (2015): 213-214.

Wilson, Jessica Hooten, and Jake Stratman. "Book Review: Flannery O'Connor: Writing a Theology of Disabled Humanity; Hard Sayings: The Rhetoric of Christian Orthodoxy in Late Modern Fiction; Passing by the Dragon: The Biblical Tales of Flannery O'Connor." (2014): 295-298.

Wilson, Jessica Hooten. "The Church without the Church: Desert Orthodoxy in Flannery O'Connor's" Dear Old Dirty Southland"." Flannery O'Connor Review 14 (2016): 123.

Wood, Ralph C. "Dark Faith: New Essays on Flannery O'Connor's/Critical Insights: Flannery O'Connor/The Terrible Speed of Mercy: A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O'Connor." Flannery O'Connor Review 11 (2013): 139.