"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (Analysis)

The story begins in Atlanta and the family travels few hours south to the Town of Toomsboro. The second half of the story and the most important scenes take place in a ditch in the middle of nowhere.

Throughout the story, the narrator seems to bring out the worst in each character. She points the kids to be terribles and disrespectful. Bailey, the father doesn’t seem to do anything.The mother unimportant and absent in most part of the story. The grandmother racist, manipulator and could be blamed for the death of her entire family. And The Misfit a criminal that escaped from prison and does not remember if he killed his father.

One of the most importants scenes of the story is when The Misfit tells the grandmother that “Jesus was the only one that ever raised the dead”, If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can…” and the grandmother reply that “Maybe He didn’t raise the dead” followed by some mumbling which the author claims that she “did not know what she was saying”. This scene of the story shows a “crisis of faith” the grandmother was experiencing. She loses her faith she always thought she had which in a sense proves that she wa never that faithful to begin with. The grandmother cannot maintain the beliefs system that she had spoken about so far in the story but never actually manifested.

The main point of the story are religious values and what it takes to be a true believer. Also the struggle between good and evil. The Misfit is a criminal which represents badness, while the grandmother tries to represent goodness. Before meeting The Misfit, the grandmother proves herself to be manipulative and selfish, and only the death can teach her to be good.

At the end of the story the Misfit said, ‘She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.’ talking about the grandmother. This phrase means that: “violence change us” , and violence really changed her. There is a time in the story when she is suffering and has to face her dead and, at some point she feels as if The Misfit were her son and reaches out to comfort him. This is the first time that she has actually cared about someone other than herself. It was the moment that was necessary for her to experience to be able to achieve salvation. And because she reached out and cared about him it demonstrated there was goodness within her.

Cite this page