Light Writing and Dark Happenings in A Good Man is Hard to Find

At the beginning of A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor I felt prepared for a juvenile story. The writing style is child-like in nature as is its protagonist, the old lady. As I was reading it I noticed very simple sentence structure, a basic vocabulary, and scarce use of commas. Everything sounded so plain that I expected maybe some cute hijinks to happen but nothing too serious. But lo, the power of understatement I was about to realize. 

The antics of the old lady in the beginning are put together with the care and gentle insult of a tale about a dear old family member. As I read through the story I couldn't help but smile at the quirky details that made me feel for the woman. I mean, for God's sake, she stows her cat away in a basket for their family road trip...this is comedic insanity. Her rationale is laughable too--trying to convince her son to travel to another state by mentioning a bandit supposedly on his way towards the one they plan to visit? 

The story begins to show its darker side at the car crash. More specifically, when the old lady begins to have doubt. For the first time she becomes embarrassed about her actions, what people are going to think about her, and this is when the whole world goes off kilter. The cat's kicked, latches itself to her son who is driving, the car flips, the mother is thrown out of the car with the baby, on and on. 

To make matters worse, the grandmother's skewed logic rings true in a cruel twist of fate--they meet the notorious Misfit. The story becomes heavily dialogue based and we are no longer in the realm of nostalgic stories and memories--we've reached the present where nothing is fixed. The Misfit plays a perfect Colonel-Kurtz-mixed-with-Batman's-Joker villain. He wonderfully plays off of the old lady's old-school racism at times, for instance remarking "Nome, I ain't a good man...but I ain't the worst in the world neither. My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters". Later on in his monologue he also shines through his simple, straightforward rebellion that seemed so radical through others' mouths: "I found out the crime don't matter. You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you're going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it". 

Tying the story off with the murder of an entire family was never an option in my mind at the beginning of the story. And through this simple tone I find the story becomes even more haunting. Good job, ol' Flanny boy.