Character Analysis: The Misfit
“A Good Man is Hard to Find”, by Flannery O’Connor, is a shocking story about the sudden death of a peaceful family on vacation. In the story, the grandmother convinces the rest of the family (which is made up of her son, daughter-in-law, and three children) to visit an old plantation she recalled from her childhood. However, after the family crashes its car, it encounters a character known as the Misfit, the only character in the story with any real depth.
When we first meet the Misfit, he exudes intelligence and the sagacity that comes with age: “He was an older man… His hair was just beginning to gray and he wore silver-rimmed spectacles that gave him a scholarly look.”(¶73) However, we quickly realize who he really is as the grandmother identifies him as The Misfit, a criminal mentioned earlier in the story as having escaped. An awful aspect of the story’s most important dialogue is the fact that it is all delivered while the grandmother’s family is being killed in the forest while she talks with The Misfit. The reader must keep that in mind while The Misfit talks about his former innocence: “I never was a bad boy that I remember of… but somewheres [sic] along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary. I was buried alive.”(111) While the reader wants to believe that he is a good man—not nearly as much as the grandmother does—we cannot help but feel disgusted by his actions, no matter his past troubles in life. As family member after family member perishes, only the Misfit and the grandmother are left talking. As she talks with him, his composure begins to crack: he admits that if he had had more faith in Jesus, “I wouldn’t be like I am now.”(137) As his voice begins to tremble and break down, however, the grandmother crosses the line— she reaches over and touches him. Instinctively he shoots her three times in the chest, eliminating any idea the reader might have had that this story had a happy ending.
The entire plot is based off of the following question: “Is The Misfit a good man?” The reader spends the entire story believing that this tense dialogue will not be wasted and that in the end The Misfit will let the grandmother live. As soon as he kills her, the story loses its purpose: the question has been answered. Even though The Misfit may be the deepest-explored character of the story, he is most definitely not a good man.(432)
1 comment:
No, he's not a good man, but what interests me about the ending of the story is that he actually has the possibility of redeeming his soul handed to him by the old woman and instinctively rejects the possibility. What I'm not quite sure of is why you think that this moment represents a loss of purpose in the narrative. It seemed to me that it made the movement of the narrative more complex, and therefore most interesting, than it had been before.
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