In Response to "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor

I absolutely love the moment of realization in a story, when the author gives that final cue you need to realize what he/she has been keeping from you until now.  In this story, that moment of realization happened for me just after the grandma says she recognized the man, but didn't know where she recognized him from.  In this story, that moment of realization was immediately followed by dread and fear.  When a character that the reader (me, in this case) has barely met evokes such a reaction, the author has definitely done something right.  I think the fact that I knew so little about the Misfit before his encounter with this family is what made him scarier.  I had no idea if he was going to actually fix the car or shoot them all at any moment.  My worries were proven right when he shot the grandma three times for touching his shoulder on page 1212.  The manner in which he has the rest of the family killed is equally chilling.  The point of view prohibits the reader from seeing what exactly is going on in the woods, which allows the reader's imagination to run wild.  Neither the grandma, nor the Misfit seem very concerned with the shots fired in the trees and this made it even less clear what precisely was going on.  I still had a small piece of hope that the family might be alive until the Misfit shot the grandma.  Until this moment, the reader is left to imagine what horrible fates may or may not have befallen the family already, and what may happen to the grandma next.  In this way, O'Connor does a marvelous job of feeding on one of our greatest fears" fear of the unknown.