A Good Man Is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Conner

An old lady and her family are going on vacation. They are heading to Florida even though the lady wants to go to Tennessee. She tries to convince them to go to Tennessee by telling them that "the Misfit" is heading to Florida. On the way to Tennessee she wants to go see an old plantation house that she remembers. They go down the dirt road to the house and get in an accident .After the accident the lady remembers that the house is in Tennessee. The car that stops to help them is the Misfit and his cronies. The shoot the dad and the brother while talking to the grandma. She tells him that God could save him. He then shoots the mom, the girl, and the baby. The Grandma is still saying that God could save him. She all of a sudden proclaims that he is her son, and he shoots her 3 times.


This story has two characters that you could write about with a psychological theory. The Granny starts out as a fussy old lady at the beginning of the story. She want to go to Tennessee and nags her son about going there. When the leave for the trip she gets all dressed up, because she wants to look just a little better than everyone. When she is interacting with the kids in the car you can tell that she feels like her generation is better, as she is constantly thinking about her times and how the kids have no appreciation for anything. At the end of the story the Granny prays to the lord and acts like such a forgiving woman, when in fact she wasn't godly until she was put in front of a gun. Even the Misfit notices this and makes the comment "She would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." The Misfit provides us with another psychological analysis. He is a criminal that doesn't even know why he was first arrested. He either blocked it out, or is a sociopath with no ability to remember the act. When the Granny starts to tell him that he is a good man, she starts to sway him into thinking that he might be. The Misfit tries to justify his other misdeeds by listing off that he was once a gospel singer. The Misfit knows that he will get caught eventually, so his thinking is "What's one more crime?"