Ultimate Kuasha

"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" illustrates many of the techniques and themes which were to characterize the typical O'Connor story. Since she was limited by her illness to short and infrequent trips away from the farm, O'Connor learned to draw upon the resources at hand for the subject matter of her stories. These resources included the people around her, her reading material, which consisted of various books and periodicals which came to Andalusia, and an assortment of local and regional newspapers. Several critics have pointed out the influence of regional and local newspaper stories on O'Connor's fiction. The Misfit, the pathological killer who murders an entire family in this story, was apparently fabricated from newspaper accounts of two criminals who had terrorized the Atlanta area in the early 1950s; Red Sammy Butts, according to another critic, may have been based on a local "good ole boy" who had made good and returned to Milledgeville each year, on the occasion of his birthday, to attend a banquet in his honor, hosted by the local merchants.

O'Connor's treatment of the characters in this story reinforces her view of man as a fallen creature. Briefly, the story depicts the destruction of an altogether too normal family by three escaped convicts. The thematic climax of the story involves an offer of grace and the grandmother's acceptance of that gift as a result of the epiphany she experiences just before her death. The events which lead to that climax, however, generate much of the interest of the story.

The reader's first view of the family is one designed to illustrate the disrespect and dissension which characterize the family's relationships with one another. The grandmother's vanity and self-centered attitude are made apparent in the first three lines of the story. Rather than acquiesce to the family's plan for a trip to Florida, she wishes to visit some of her "connections" in east Tennessee. In the next line, one learns that Bailey is her only son, a bit of information which prevents a possible misreading of the grandmother's last earthly words, "You're one of my children," and thereby prevents the reader from missing the action of grace at the end of the story. In her attempt to get the family to go to Tennessee rather than to Florida, the grandmother uses the news story of the escaped murderer, the Misfit, to try to scare Bailey into changing his mind. Although Bailey does not answer her (thereby showing a complete lack of respect for her), the incident provides an ironic foreshadowing to the end of the story.

When Bailey fails to respond to her pressure, the grandmother attempts to get her daughter-in-law, a dull young woman with a face "as broad and innocent as a cabbage," to help her convince Bailey to go to Tennessee rather than Florida because the children, John Wesley and June Star, have not yet visited Tennessee. Bailey's wife also ignores the plea, but the non-vocal disrespect of the parents finds voice through the children. Their conduct toward the grandmother emphasizes the disrespect which is characteristic of the entire family.

When the family leaves for Florida the next morning, the grandmother, against Bailey's express order forbidding it, smuggles the family cat, Pitty Sing, into the car with her because she fears it would miss her too much, or that it would accidentally asphyxiate itself if left behind. The cat does survive; ironically, however, it is responsible for the auto accident which leads to the family's death, and, contrary to the grandmother's view of her importance to the cat, it befriends the man who murders the entire family. The cat alone survives.