Response to “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor

 This story by Flannery O’Connor, was at times very difficult for me to connect to, and at other times a very emotional read for me. The extreme violence, though difficult to read, strangely was not the part of the story that most affected me emotionally. Perhaps it was because O’Connor’s methods of having much of the violence occur out of sight made the extremity of the situation even more challenging to absorb, or perhaps not. Regardless, it was the instances of the grandmother’s forgetfulness and vulnerability, the instances of her being unguarded that made me feel the most upset, the most sympathetic, and the most angry. At one point, O’Connor writes, “a horrible thought came to her. The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the corner” (1206). In this moment, when the grandmother realizes she has led the family down the wrong road, that the house she had convinced them to go look at was in another state, I felt her shame and discomfort, felt the reversal of her role from parent to child with her son as she knew she would be chastised and that he was already impatient. What is even worse is that her response leads to the accident, which causes such a devastating end. The randomness of the story is not only in the violence, but in the flawed workings of the grandmother’s mind, the workings that lead her and her family down just the wrong road into the path of violent criminals. Similarly, it is the grandmother’s revelation upon first coming into contact with the men, her exclamation of, “You’re The Misfit!” that seals her family’s fate (1208). In her recognition of the men, she makes it impossible for her family to be let go.  It is the grandmother’s mistakes that lead her family to their end, and for me, that was the part of O’Connor’s story that was the most difficult to read, the part that – despite the gruesome violence – left me most unsettled and upset, and wishing for the ability to rewind.