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| Edition: | Womens Press (Paperback) |
| Author: | Flannery O'Connor |
| Published: | September 2001 |
| Pages: | 256 |
| ISBN 10: | 0704346966 |
| Used: | $15.58 (5) |
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A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a short story written by Flannery O'Connor. O'Connor was a southern Catholic and often incorporated her religious thinking into her stories. The story appears in the collection of short stories of the same name, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. The interpretive work of scholars often focuses on the controversial final scene.
Plot summary
The story begins with a family argumentive about where to go on vacation. They live in Atlanta, Georgia. Everyone except the grandmother wishes to go to Florida. She suggests they go to east Tennessee instead. In a failed attempt to persuade the family to abandon their plans, she says that The Misfit, a serial killer who escaped from the Federal Penitentiary, is on the loose somewhere on the way to Florida, foreshadowing events to come. On their way south through Georgia, they stop for lunch at Red Sammy's and have a conversation which centers on nostalgia for the Old South. After leaving for their journey grandmother tells the family about a house and plantation she visited when she was young and coaxes the family into visiting there. Unfortunately, on the way they have a car accident involving a smuggled cat the grandmother brings without the consent of her son, Bailey. The grandmother accidentally knocks open the basket in which she had hidden the cat and the cat lands on top of Bailey's shoulders. Bailey's sudden, frightened reaction results in an accident in which the car flips over. Once the car comes to a rest, the family gets out. The grandmother complains of internal injuries to try and keep Bailey from lashing out at her. At this point a car appears in the distance and stops upon seeing the wreckage. Three men exit the car, all carrying guns. The grandmother recognizes one of them as The Misfit and announces her realization, in effect dooming her and her entire family as the Misfit now must kill them all to cover his tracks.
The grandmother pleads for her life, claiming The Misfit is clearly not of common birth and asserting several times he is a "good man." She tries to appeal to any belief in Christ The Misfit might hold. While she tries to reason with him, her family (first the father and son, then the mother, daughter and baby) is taken into the woods by Bobby Lee, where they are shot. When grandmother tries to touch The Misfit after saying he is also "one of my babies", The Misfit recoils and shoots her three times. At the close of the story, he claims that "She would of been a good woman... if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life" and that "it is no real pleasure in life."
