Catholic Thought discussion
Short Reads
>
A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
https://d2y1pz2y630308.cloudfront.net...
You can find "A Good Man is Hard to Find" on page 130.
Well, I was slightly depressed when I started to read this story. I am now over the edge. Seriously though, my first impressions are that the children are disrespectful, Grandma is a manipulator, and Mom quietly hangs out in the background. I have not yet formed an opinion about Dad. I plan to read it a second time so that I can come up with comparisons for Grandma and the misfit. I will post more later.It was quite jarring to read how they referred to African Americans. The "N" word and pickaninny jumped right off the page. However, I do have to remember that the story took place in Georgia in the 1950's, but those derogatory words are very harsh to hear.
I will post more later.
Mod
Let’s start with some aspects of the grandmother’s character. We see her chief trait in the very first sentence of the story: “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind.” And later in the first paragraph she tells her son, “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did.” Grandma, as I will refer to her since she is nameless, is manipulative, scheming, calculating, devious, and I would even say, passive-aggressive. And those aren’t even her only sins. When she doesn’t get her way, John Wesley, the boy, tells her to stay at home. Grandma responds back in a childish exchange with the two children.
“She wouldn’t stay at home to be queen for a day,” June Star said without raising her yellow head.
“Yes and what would you do if this fellow, The Misfit, caught you?” the grandmother asked.
“I’d smack his face,” John Wesley said.
“She wouldn’t stay at home for a million bucks,” June Star said. “Afraid she’d miss something. She has to go everywhere we go.”
“All right, Miss,” the grandmother said. “Just remember that the next time you want me to curl your hair.”
She’s vindictive, petty, and childish, reducing herself to their level of childish bickering. Obviously this wasn’t the first time. June Star turns out to be right, Grandma is the very first person ready for the trip the next morning. The kids know her well. And still these aren’t her only sins. We see she is racist, uppity to those who may not have as much money or privilege as she has, and down-right condescending.
And still these are not her only sins. She idolizes a time of slavery, “the plantation,” and measures the worth of people on whether they own mansions and hold stock. When June Star tells Grandma that she wouldn’t have been interested in a man that just brought over watermelons, Grandma responds, “she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden because he was a gentleman and had bought Coca-Cola stock when it first came out and that he had died only a few years ago, a very wealthy man.”
And she just lies. Now, I don’t blame her for lying when faced with the Misfit holding a gun at her, but did she really tell the truth to Red Sammy that he was a “good man?” Here she just got finished describing her ideal man in Mr. Teagarden (a name that suspiciously sounds contrived and may not have been a true story) when she tells a sort of slob of a guy, “the fat boy with the happy laugh” according to his sign who the whole time is never happy or laughs (actually he’s morose and sullen) that he is a “good man.” We don’t have enough information on whether Sammy is a good man—he seems to be lying with his sign—and certainly Grandma doesn’t have enough information. She just met him. Maybe he is or maybe he isn’t, but she seems to come to a conclusion on a simple anecdote.
Notice what Sammy says after she tells him he’s a good man. “Yes’m, I suppose so.” He agrees. We all think we’re good people. And the grandmother’s constant telling people they’re “good” is really a projection of what she thinks of herself. She considers herself “good,” despite the litany of sins we see on every page. She thinks of herself as a Southern Lady, who is not common, who is above the modern people, above the blacks, above the Europeans. What it comes down to is that she is prideful, the most damning sin of all.
Mod
We get a description on how she is dressed, that she doesn't want to be caught dead looking sloppy, but there is no indication the family is well off. The kids eat sandwiches in the car, and the place they later stop at is one of these typical flashy tourist traps with gaudy advertising miles ahead. And as everyone knows, once you get there the actual establishment leaves much to be desired, and in this case is a real dinky place. That's no place a true southern lady frequents.
Mod
Mod
In the hopes of getting her son to change his mind about where to go on vacation, Grandma says, “Just you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did.” Well that’s exactly what she does in having them turn around and go down that dirt road.
When we first see Baily’s wife she is described as having a face “as broad and innocent as a cabbage and was tied around with a green head-kerchief that had two points on the top like a rabbit’s ears.” And her personality is rather like a cabbage.
When John Wesley is asked what he would do if he met up with the Misfit, he says, “I’d smack his face.” Yeah, sure.
The childish back and forth between the children and the grandmother is a sort of low brow comedy, kind of like a TV skit.
Grandma is dressed rather formal for a driving vacation trip, white gloves, a navy, print dress accented with lace and a decorative pin at the neckline. And a rather pompous hat. Reminds me of characters in the TV show Hee Haw from the 1970s, which was full of funny southern stereotypes. Ironically she thinks, “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.”
The road stop diner they stop to eat is owned by Red Sammy Butts, a man who wears his pants just above his butt, has a belly flopping over that looks like a “sack of meal,” “the fat boy with the happy laugh” as he calls himself, but as it turns out as I said he is just the opposite, morose and sullen.
Chained in Red Sammy’s parking lot is a monkey who seems to be scared of the children, chattering and climbing the tree. Why a monkey in rural Georgia? I’m not exactly sure, but it’s awfully strange and comedic. It seems almost like a living gargoyle.
Of course with the accident you have the cat jumping out of the bag, latching itself to Baily as he’s driving, and causing the car to flip into a ditch. Then the children coming out shout for joy: ‘“We’ve had an ACCIDENT!” the children screamed in a frenzy of delight’ and then find themselves sorry that no one was killed. It’s slapstick.
There’s lots of subtle humor. It really is meant to be funny.
I thought the funniest part was when the grandmother realized she got the wrong dirt drive, in the wrong state, to twist her son's arm into making a detour. And then her internal struggle over how to cover it up. And then that this bungle led them right to the Misfit. I actually had some sympathy for the old gal. she seemed stuck in her own world, like many older folks. I guess since I'm on the brink of that time of life, and my work involves interacting with the elderly, I tend to have sympathy. This grandma seemed to be imprisoned in her thoughts and her past.
I thought the story is extremely funny. They are all caricatures with incredible life blown into them. Even the mother who is only described in her dress and holding the baby, has flesh and bones. The grandmother's campaign to get the family to visit some old plantation she recalls, only to be in the wrong state, the escaped cat that causes the car to flip in a ditch, the contrast between the grandmother's genteel pretentions and her childish and small-minded behavior, even the letters EAT on the watermellon are laugh-out-loud funny. But the mix of humor and profundity at the end is the absolute best. Without giving any spoiler away, I think the final observation has to be among the best (or at least funniest) lines in literature.
Mod
To Kelly, yes that was very funny. I almost put that down in my list but I had to cut it off somewhere. I also thought it very funny that the grandmother hoped she had damaged an organ in the accident in the hopes it would delay Bailey's ire.
And another very funny moment was Bailey's ire when Grandma tells the Misfit she recognizes him. O'Connor doesn't actually use the cuss words, but we are left to imagine some pretty intense four letter words coming out of Bailey's mouth.
Yes, each of the characters' reactions to the accident are spot on. I wish I could have known O'Connor as a person. She must have had a wicked sense of humor.
Oh this tricky grandmother. Relegated to a position with the children in striving for her son's affections, displaced by the "children's mother" from her role as the matriarch and center of control for the family, and resorting to manipulation of her son and grandchildren to maintain power. Pointing out good men- those that make money, dress well, keep up appearances- and missing the good man who has been allowing her to maintain her facade of power and genteelity, taking care of her and dealing with her manipulation in his own marriage and family. I see Bailey as the long-suffering good man and son, doing what he thinks is best to spare his mother shame and a shot of truth. Alas, it may have been better had this been dealt with earlier as they may not have ended up as they did. Excellent story and I did not see the ending coming.
Mod
Haha!. Very good Ashleigh. Yes, she's tricky, or at least she tries to be. Everything , however, turns into a disaster!
I did not see Baily as the good son/good man. Baily and his wife seem to have checked out. They don't seem to say much to the grandmother or to their kids. We don't even hear the mother engaging with the baby. It is only when she passes the baby to the grandmother in the back seat that we hear anyone talking to/playing with the baby. They struck me as passive, unengaged, either turned in or turned off. The only time we get much of a reaction from Baily is when John Wesley kicks the back of his seat hard enough for him to feel it in his kidneys. And, then, he does not correct his son or teach him or take any sort of leadership in the family. Instead he demonstrates that might makes right by turning the car around to give John Wesley a reward for his temper tantrum.
Mod
I read this as told from the grandmother's perspective. She sees her replacement--not her daughter in law or her son's wife, but the children's mother--as dumpy because she is not dressed up. I assumed she was doing all the work of raising this family and didn't have time to get fancified for a road trip, and I see the son as bearing his mother's overbearing-ness as well, letting her come along so she doesn't have to be left alone, after much closed-door discussion with his wife. To me, this reads like an overbearing mother in law who thinks she knows everything and is going to do what she wants to, no matter what it does to the relationship of her son and his wife. (Perhaps I am reading too much into this, but this lady can make married life very difficult!).
Irene wrote: "I did not see Baily as the good son/good man. Baily and his wife seem to have checked out. They don't seem to say much to the grandmother or to their kids. We don't even hear the mother engaging wi..."Irene, you are right Wesley was rewarded for his bad behavior. I did not pick up on that. They are all behaving badly, either by action or inaction.
Yes, the grandmother would be a cross in a family. But, O'Connor tends to tell the reader what the reader needs to know. If Baily and his wife had been wrestling with how to accommodate the grandmother's overbearing personality, O'Connor would make some remark to point to that. The fact that Baily and his wife are largely silent, even when confronted with the Misfit, that neither make any protest or effort to protect anyone, tells us what sort of personality we have. Her characters tend to be outsized to the point of grotesque. She is famous for saying that when talking to the deaf, you shout and when writing for the blind, you use large strokes. That is why she used such dramatic characters with behaviors that often shocked the reader because she thought that we were largely spiritually deaf and blind. So, if Baily and his wife were supposed to be long suffering saints, O'Connor would have probably given us some heroic or saintly moment.
Mod
Irene wrote, "if Baily and his wife were supposed to be long suffering saints, O'Connor would have probably given us some heroic or saintly moment..." The wife apparently learned early in the marriage that Baily was a mama's boy who would not defend her even if she tried to be any more than a brood mare and work horse.I think we see Baily about to blow just before the cat.jumps on him, maybe the accident could have brought him closer to becoming the man of the family, but the grandmother blows it when she stupidly announces that she recognizes the Misfit. Bailey's response to that came as a surprise to all, and the Misfit might have let them go had the grandmother been less overbearing and learned to keep quiet at the right time. The Misfit's final judgment on her is spot on.
We are going to disagree on how to understand Baily and his wife. I can only see a cabbage when I read her, a dull and passive person who does not even engage her own children. But, that is the amazing thing about good literature. Where I see a cabbage, someone else sees a complex person who has learned to pick battles, who has realized that her husband will never support her or who has had long discussions behind closed doors with that husband about the impending family vacation and the irritating mother-in-law. It is moments like this that I wish I could ask the author directly.
Mod
Mod
I think you're right, the story isn't long enough to flesh them out.
The wife takes care of the baby, and anyone who has ever been a mother knows how taxing, how exhausting that is. She hides her hair in a kerchief, probably because there is not enough energy in the day to take care of herself let alone run interference between cantankerous grandma and the older kids.
Mod
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQT7y...
Thanks for that link, Manny. That was a treat.
Mod
By all rights, when a car flips 360 degrees into a ten foot deep ditch and passengers are not even wearing seatbelts as they wouldn’t in the 1950s, it is very likely people in the car would have died. You don’t walk away from accidents like that. Let’s say, metaphysically, they have died and unbeknownst to them they are dead and waiting for what comes next. The family is sitting in a ditch, ten feet deep, which is not exactly the six feet of a burial, but O’Connor may not want to make it obvious. But they are below ground. Behind the ditch are woods. O’Connor describes them as “tall and dark and deep.” That language is an allusion to a famous poem by Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” That poem is ultimately about death (silence of isolation, snow as symbol for death, frozen lake recalls the lake in Dante’s Inferno). Read the last stanza:
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
O’Connor’s echo of “dark and deep” is not accidental. The grandmother has gone on a journey of many miles, her vacation as we have seen; you can even stretch that to her life time, and now she has come to a stop. Along comes a “big black battered hearse-like automobile” which contains beings (angels?) who are going to bring her and the family to their final end. “There was not a cloud in the sky nor any sun.” We hear that several times. How could there be no cloud in the sky and no sun? We are in a state of another world. They look up and it’s the heavens. They are in another plane, somewhere in between earth and heaven. They are going before the final judge.
So that would make the Misfit, the executer of that judgement, and that would be Jesus Christ. The Misfit even compares himself to Jesus at one point. “Jesus thown everything off balance,” the Misfit says. “It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn’t committed any crime…” Well, the Misfit has thrown everything off balance too, and he clearly links himself to Jesus. Just before that connection to Jesus Bobby Lee throws him the shirt with the parrots on it. Parrots have been used as representative for the Holy Spirit at least since Gustave Flaubert’s story “A Simple Heart,” (see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_T...) about a hundred years prior to O’Connor writing hers. We saw parrots as suggestive of the Holy Spirit in Willa Cather’s novel Death of the Archbishop. O’Connor was very conscious of great writers, and I’m sure she read Flaubert’s story since it had a Catholic dimension to it. So the tossed shirt with the parrots flying onto the Misfit is certainly suggestive of the Holy Spirit coming onto him. And then the Misfit puts on the shirt. This is all very symbolic action.
But it goes even beyond that. Notice that the Misfit is squatting down the whole time he is speaking to the grandmother. “The Misfit squatted down to the ground,” we are told early in the encounter. The whole time the Misfit is speaking to her he is doodling on the ground with the butt of his gun. “The Misfit kept scratching in the ground with the butt of his gun as if he were thinking about it.” Even just before the end he hits the ground with his fist. The Misfit squatting and writing on the ground parallels Jesus in John chapters seven and eight with the woman taken in adultery to be stoned. There too a woman’s fate hangs in the balance while Jesus writes in the sand. If Jesus agrees with the men who intend to stone her, she is doomed.
What we see in this symbolic reading is the grandmother coming before judgement, and the fate of her soul hanging in the balance.
No, the Misfit is not Jesus, but O’Connor is using the Misfit to expand the meaning of the story. Remember in this reading, she is already dead from the car accident. The bullets are not what causes the death, but what decides her judgement. The question then that beckons us is, what is her judgement: Saved or damned?
Mod
You're welcome. It was fun.
Interesting question/reading, Manny. I need to think about that.
Mod
Yes, re-read the story from the accident on with that in mind. The beauty of short stories is you can read them multiple times and pick up so much more.
I listened to the YouTube video of O'Connor reading her short story. After reading and listening to the story, I still do not find the story funny. I think the first half of the story was probably amusing to people who read it in the 1950's and 1960's. The disrespectful behavior that was displayed by June Star and John Wesley may have been funny, because it was shocking. (Unfortunately, it is not very shocking today.) This bad behavior was probably less common in the 50's. Disrespectful children and apathetic parents seem to fit the characteristics of most characters on today's TV sitcoms. I remember the first time I watched “Tool Time” starring Tim Allen. I remember being irritated with the way the children talked back to their parents and how they all treated each other like idiots. Several other sitcoms have also portrayed families in the same light by using put-down aggressive humor. Anyway, don't misunderstand me, I enjoy humor and I am not a stick in the mud. Okay, I will get off my soap box now and will re-read the second half of the story to see if I can figure out the Misfit.
If the Misfit is the executor of the judgement, I am wondering why is it only the Grandmother who receives judgement? The other members of the family were hauled off to the woods and shot rather quickly. Or was their judgment immediate, since the Misfit asked for them to be taken away? Although, they were brats, I can't imagine them being condemned to hell. I am also wondering why is it that the children made the misfit nervous? The misfit mentioned the nervousness two times. Children can be unpredictable, but I am thinking they made him nervous for some other reason.
When the grandmother reaches out to the Misfit in recognition that he could be one of her babies, is she having her first moment in the story of moving away from her narcisistic inward obsession? Is she finally recognizing the humanity in another person? Or is she finally recognizing her own sinfulness, the startling truth that she was more like this man who murdered her family than the "lady" she had tried to portray on the outside? When the Misfit says that she would have been a good lady if there had been someone there to shoot her every moment of her life, what goodness was he pointing to that surfaced when she was faced with her own mortality?The Misfit is the only character that names the truth of the Gospel, even if he rejects it. If Jesus really did raise the dead, if we really believe in our own resurrection through Christ, there is nothing to do but to throw it all away to follow him. And, if he did not, if death is the end, then why not live with reckless abandon now, even if it brings our own death because what is 10 or 50 years of this life in the face of eternal death. Be hot or cold, but if you are lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth. The Misfit is cold. But the rest of the family is lukewarm. If this is a judgement sceen, maybe that is why they are summerarily dispatched. The Misfit is cold. But what is the grandmother? Does she ever understand the ultimate choice the Gospel puts before us? Does her recognition of the Misfit as one of her possible babies, give any sort of answer?
Mod
“I wasn’t there so I can’t say He didn’t,” The Misfit said. “I wisht I had of been there,” he said, hitting the ground with his fist. “It ain’t right I wasn’t there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady,” he said in a high voice, “if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn’t be like I am now.” His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother’s head cleared for an instant. She saw the man’s face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.
At the cracking of the Misfit’s voice and then seeing him almost cry, the grandmother has a transcendent vision. With each shot, she has called out “Bailey boy,” as if recalling her son as a child. This has been on her mind, but has had to focus on the tension-filled situation and the preservation of her life. When the Misfit pounds the ground with his fist—something I can see John Wesley doing—and nearly coming to a cry, the grandmother's social pretense of proper decorum falls away, her selfish sense of preservation falls away, and she has what O’Connor is always aiming for in her stories, a moment of grace. “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” she says. All of a sudden she no longer sees a murderer but a child, a child perhaps who has gone wrong, but nonetheless a child of God and as a mother herself sees in him her own child. This is in complete opposition to everything we have seen of her. That litany of sins I enumerated above dissolve, fade into a memory. The willful striving to be socially respectable also dissolves, and the compassion of her heart is laid bare, honest and forthright.
This is why the Misfit at the end says, “She would of been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
Samuel Johnson, the 18th century writer and intellectual has a famous quote: “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” The grandmother needed that moment of impending death to concentrate her mind and accept God’s grace. This was her moment of truth.
Mod
Irene, we posted nearly the same time. Yes, it is a moment of repressing her natural narcissism. I don't know if she's recognizing her sins. If somehow she would have survived and lived on, I could see her return to her previous way of life. But then it could be life altering. On that we'll never know. However, for the state of her soul at death, I would say this was enough of a repentance to be saved. With a heck of a lot of time in Purgatory!
On the rest of your questions, I intended to put something together that puts the Misfit and Grandam into perspective that answers them. I just need another day or two.
Irene, great analysis! I did think her recognition of the misfits As one of her babies was her moment of truth. And the Misfit, who has given up on salvation, doesn't want to hear any more. Like many who turn their backs on the gospel of forgiveness, mercy, and salvation, they can only argue as a sophist does for so long before they resort to insult or injury. I think he shoots all the others because in some ways each one reminds him of how he used to be, innocent as a baby or a child, then a child learning to be independent through disobedience or rebellion, then an adult who is forced physically or emotionally to submit, as Bailey and his wife have. The grandmother is a worthy opponent until she suggests she could mother him. Another reminder of his failure to relate to anyone but killers. Like Lucifer, he wants the one thing that he thinks will give him equality with God, the power over life and death. He represents the culture of death in our own time.
I love the way O'Connor gives us the most unlikely moments of grace. Most authors, most of us, would place the gracefilled moments in times of love or beauty or generosity: holding your grandbaby on your lap, seeing your son and grandchildren taken into the woods and shot, in the beauty of the landscape through which they drive, in the memories of long lost loves, in any of a million ordinary and not so ordinary moments, but not in the twisted face of a murderer. God is always trying to get through to us. If only our vision would clear, we could focus long enough to recognize it.
Mod
Irene, I think you summed up the central meaning of the story perfectly.
And, if it is about grace breaking through, then it may not matter if the grandmother had a moment of empathetic love for the child that the Misfit once was or a realization that she too was a sinner. Either realizations are moments of grace. Although we do not know how such a moment might have played out if the grandmother had survived, if she would have been profoundly changed or if she would have reverted to her old ways, we do know that for most of us, our moments of grace only change us in microscopic ways. We grow inch by inch. Therefore, we could project that the grandmother would largely return to old ways. If that would have been the case, then her death at that moment was also blessing; she died when her heart was most open to the presence of God.
Mod
So true! and sadly we see it all around us.
Mod
As to how they are different, perhaps that is the easy side of the equation and we can dispense with it quickly. First, the grandmother is not a killer. Second, the grandmother uses her verbal dexterity and her wits to get her way and not a gun. "She was a talker," Bobby Lee says. Meanwhile the Misfit seems to be rather reticent. He's the opposite of his father who seems to have a "knack of handling" the authorities. The Misfit is the opposite; he seems to succumb to the authorities. Interestingly the authorities claim the Misfit killed his father, the talker, just as he will kill the grandmother, the talker. I think the suggestion is that the Misfit really did kill his father. The grandmother's entire interaction with the Misfit is her attempt to handle the authority of the guy with the gun. She fails. The guy with the gun gets his way.
As to how they are similar, that takes some close reading to reveal, but I think it's more probing. They are both sinful people, though I think the Misfit realizes his sins while the grandmother is oblivious to them. But I think at the heart of it, their sins stem from the same impulse. Committing crimes and especially murdering people is imposing your will over God's will. What are the grandmother's chief sins? As I listed above, she's vindictive, childish, conniving, manipulative, and devious. I said she was "passive-aggressive" which at its core is not that different from the Misfit's aggressive behavior, the difference being how they weaponized the aggression. Notice the grandmother aggressive behavior toward Bailey when she tries to change his mind about going to Florida standing "with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head." Now the newspaper is not a gun, but the posturing is aggressive. Vindictive, conniving, manipulative, these are sins where she is imposing her will onto people. Ultimately for both the Misfit and for Grandma, it's not "thy will be done" but "my will be done."
And the childishness is also a commonality between the two. We've seen the grandmother reduce herself to the children's level. She banters on their level and they feel free to continue the bantering because they see her as a mental equal. The Misfit too is an adult who appears to not have matured. He doesn't kill for gain; he kills for the heck of it. His problems seem to stem from when he was a child.
"I never was a bad boy that I remember of," The Misfit said in an almost dreamy voice, "but somewheres along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary. I was buried alive," and he looked up and held her attention to himby a steady stare.
"That's when you should have started to pray," she said. "What did you do to get sent to the penitentiary that first time?"
"Turn to the right, it was a wall," The Misfit said, looking up again at the cloudless sky. "Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was a floor. I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set there, trying to remember what it was I done and I ain't recalled it to this day. Oncet in a while, I would think it was coming to me, but it never come."
Not remembering one's crime is actually what a child says and does. At the end when the grandmother hits a nerve on whether Jesus existed that brings the Misfit into a childish emotion.
"I wasn't there so I can't say He didn't," The Misfit said. "I wisht I had of been there," he said, hitting the ground with his fist. "It ain't right I wasn't there because if I had of been there I would of known. Listen lady," he said in a high voice, "if I had of been there I would of known and I wouldn't be like I am now." His voice seemed about to crack and the grandmother's head cleared for an instant.
He reverts back to his childhood here, and places blame at some outside circumstance for his criminal behavior, making an excuse like a child. Even he seems to think at the heart of his problem is some inability to piece the adult world together.
"I call myself The Misfit," he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."
No child thinks his punishment is warranted. He is saying that about himself. And what criminal calls himself the "Misfit?" Al Capone called himself "Scarface." The famous pirate called himself "Blackbeard." Another criminal was called "Jack the Ripper." John Wesley and June Star in the story are misfits. As is the grandmother. The name "The Misfit" is childish, and suggests his problems are rooted in an arrested development.
Another commonality between the two is a veneer of respectability. Yes, the Misfit is a psychopathic killer, but he is respectful and kind. When the grandmother recognizes the Misfit and Bailey shouts some unmentionable words to his mother, the Misfit finds an excuse for Bailey: “Lady,” he said, “don’t you get upset. Sometimes a man says things he don’t mean. I don’t reckon he meant to talk to you thataway.” When the misfit wants to send Bailey and John Wesley into the woods, he asks kindly. He is even kinder when he asks the children’s mother and the little girl, making sure one of his henchmen helps the mother up. He even excuses himself when he’s embarrassed to be shirtless in front of ladies.
”He put on his black hat and looked up suddenly and then away deep into the woods as if he were embarrassed again. “I’m sorry I don’t have on a shirt before you ladies,” he said, hunching his shoulders slightly. “We buried our clothes that we had on when we escaped and we’re just making do until we can get better. We borrowed these from some folks we met,” he explained.
He’s trying to make do “until we can get better,” That’s the language of one concerned with respectability.
The grandmother’s veneer of respectability is on display throughout the story. She dresses fancy for a vacation ride because “anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” She tells June Star she should be “ashamed” for insulting the waitress but meanwhile moments before in private she used the most horrid racist terms. And she is obsessed with the notion of a “good man.” She tells Red Butts he’s a good man. Red Butts is essentially a lying slob who keeps a monkey chained to a tree and bosses his wife around. And what does she tell the Misfit?
“I just know you’re a good man,” she said desperately. “You’re not a bit common!”
Not being “common” seems to be her definition of what is a good man. I’m sure she considers herself a good lady, after all she does think of herself as a lady and not common. But is this the Christian definition of a good man? Isn’t the definition of a good man one who acts like Jesus Christ, who has the heart of Jesus Christ, or at least tries to? Neither Red Butts nor the Misfit nor the grandmother even come close to acting like Christ. That is why a good man is hard to find.
Mod
So why are all these similarities between the Misfit and the grandmother important? Ultimately the story is about the grandmother. The similarities between the two provide a projection into each one. So what is at the core of the Misfit, can be, with some reasonable consideration, attributed to the grandmother. This I think is important to grasp the theological implications of the story. We are allowed into the Misfit's theological understanding of life, and so with reasonable deliberation, we can project that theological world view to the grandmother. Let's look at some of the theological points. Let’s look at the easiest one first, not needing help.
"If you would pray," the old lady said, "Jesus would help you."
"That's right," The Misfit said.
"Well then, why don't you pray?" she asked trembling with delight suddenly.
"I don't want no hep," he said. "I'm doing all right by myself."
Is he really doing alright by himself? He’s been locked up in jail. He’s not doing alright. He could use a lot of help. Now project this into the grandmother, and let’s consider the state of her soul. Is her soul doing alright by herself? She doesn’t seem to want help and she is extraordinarily willful. It’s been her will, not “thy will.” From what we have seen of her sinfulness, I would say right now she’s heading for hell, the metaphysical equivalent of the Misfit’s jail.
Second, let’s look at how the Misfit can’t seem to recall sins.
"Turn to the right, it was a wall," The Misfit said, looking up again at the cloudless sky. "Turn to the left, it was a wall. Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was a floor. I forget what I done, lady. I set there and set there, trying to remember what it was I done and ain't recalled it to this day. Oncet in a while, I would think it was coming to me, but it never come."
Consider that as a metaphor for sitting at judgment day in front of Christ the judge. None of us will be able to recall all the sins of a lifetime. Most of the time we aren’t even aware of the sins we commit that moment. Look at all the sins the grandmother has committed on that morning’s journey. She’s oblivious to them.
Third, let’s look at what the Misfit says about matching the punishment to the crime.
"Jesus thown everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn't committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me. Of course," he said, "they never shown me my papers. That's why I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know what you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see do they match and in the end you'll have something to prove you ain't been treated right."
Again, take that as a metaphor for facing the Judge and He going down a list of your sins to decide what your eternal fate will be. This is how the Misfit conceptualizes eternal judgement. But that’s not theologically correct, at least from a Catholic perspective. It’s not a list but the state of your soul at death. We all commit sins, but is your soul clean and absolved and in a state of grace? I think we get further insight when the Misfit talks about his name.
I call myself The Misfit," he said, "because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."
The implication I think is that he can’t fit the theology together. It doesn’t make sense to him. I think O’Connor is contrasting a Protestant world view against a Catholic. We the reader know the Catholic view, and we’re watching the Protestants live out their dislocations that result from their world view. It’s O’Connor who solicits Protestant and Catholic distinctions by naming the boy “John Wesley,” the same as a famous Protestant theologian.
For O’Connor, it seems to me that what drives her Protestant characters to this sort of tension and anxiety is the lack of graces we Catholics receive from the sacraments and from a church that provides authority. We don’t have to make it fit. The Church and the Magisterium has made it fit for us. For the Misfit, and the grandmother presumably, it’s him and his bible. They have to make it fit on their own. Second, the sacrament of penance on a regular basis would have done both the Misfit and the grandmother a world of good. Neither would be experiencing the anxiety of a final judgement if their sins had been taken care of sacramentally.
So when the grandmother implores the Misfit to “pray, pray” and call on Jesus for help, she is symbolically telling herself to pray and to call on Jesus. Notice how many times she calls on Jesus in that encounter. Notice, when she reaches her moment of crises, she falls “down in the ditch with her legs twisted under her.” Are her legs twisted supposed to suggest the crossed legs of Christ on the cross? Is O’Connor giving her a spiritual communion with Christ as the grandmother seems to emotionally breakdown? I think so. It comes just before her moment of compassion. A spiritual communion is as close as one can come to actually receiving the sacrament. We have been living with spiritual communions watching Mass on TV during this virus.
I would also venture to say that the three bullets the Mistfit fires into her is a spiritual sacrament too. One could name the bullets Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I’m not one hundred percent sure on the theology. If anyone has other thoughts, please feel free to correct me. I don’t claim to be a theologian.
Thank you, Manny, for a comprehensive, first-rate analysis of the story.I just want to comment that I think one reason Flannery O'Connor's stories disturb and linger with us is that in the times in which we live, many have largely left behind the concept of sin, the sense that there is a deeper dimension to our acts than the merely cultural. But if we lie, if we steal, if we use or betray or manipulate others, we aren't just displaying dysfunctional behavior or violating a social norm, we are deeply damaging our souls. In her stories Flannery O'Connor reminds of this very Catholic, very unsettling truth.
I like your analysis, Manny, although I think it may be a bit of a reach to imagine the Misfit administering sacraments. I need to think about that. I do agree very strongly, Frances, that our culture has truly lost a sense of sin, since the Sixties set out to eliminate guilt, the notion of sin had to be neutralized, and the culture of liberation has thus done quite a number on our souls. With that thought, I need to revisit O'Connor's other works.
Mod
LOL, I didn't quite phrase it that way, but that is a startling thought.
A family of five and the grandmother from Georgia go on driving vacation toward Florida when the grandmother connives her son, the driver, to take a detour to a southern plantation she remembers. The detour turns into a dirt road, and the grandmother’s cat jumps out of a bag to disturb the driver, leading the car to flip onto the side of the road. Coming to their assistance is an escaped convict, who calls himself “The Misfit,” and two of his henchmen, which leads to a climatic dialogue between the Misfit and the grandmother.
We have two weeks to read and discuss this story. Let’s not give away the ending the first week. We can discuss the ending starting next week. This will give everyone a chance to read it without it being spoiled. In the meantime, there are at least three ways to enjoy this story.
(1) Enjoy all the witty and zany humor that runs throughout the story. Heck, there’s even a monkey in the story. What’s a monkey doing in rural Georgia anyway? I picked this story because we wanted something a little more fun after all this pandemic news. There’s even a reference to the Spanish flu in the story!
(2) Notice the sequence of events that string together that leads to the climatic ending. Notice the situational irony in the events and verbal irony in the dialogue.
(3) Compare the characters of the Misfit and the Grandmother. What makes them different? What do they have in common?
Next week when we open this up to discuss the ending, we can discuss the deeper implications of the story. What is, after all, a “good man?” What are the theological implications of the story?