character analysis

The Grandmother Character Analysis

In Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," a family travels to Florida by car when they make an error and end up in the middle of nowhere. The Grandmother awakens from her nap in the car and learns a plantation she once visited was close by. (character analysis)According to her, the house used to have six white columns at the end of a driveway bordered by oak trees, making the family travel far into the forest by car.

The Grandmother recalls, all of a sudden, that the house was actually in Tennessee and not Georgia, a mistake she decided to conceal despite having traveled deep into the forest (O'Connor 137). The main character, the Grandmother, is a deeply devout woman who frequently speaks of God. (character analysis) In the forest, the family meets a serial killer named The Misfit, who ends up killing the family despite the Grandmother praising him for being a good man to save herself, but he also kills her.

In "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," the plot revolves around the unnamed Grandmother who believes she is morally superior to others because she is a lady. She frequently and freely criticizes other people. (character analysis)The Grandmother is Bailey's mother and an elderly woman from the South. Despite her age, she is a naive woman who seems to only think about herself. It soon comes to a moment when the family plans to take a trip, and she is in the front-line making suggestions of the family's destination.

She informs Bailey that she couldn't possibly take the kids on the same path as the Misfit, claiming that her conscience serves as a compass in her life and could never mislead her. She criticizes the kids' mother for not taking them to a place where they could be broad, and she likens the mom's face to a cabbage. (character analysis)She reprimands John Wesley for not showing his home state of Georgia more respect despite it being a personal objection of the city.

On the trip day, she takes her cat in the car against her son's wishes, which ultimately causes the collision that results in the family's deaths. (character analysis) The Grandmother dresses up for the trip than the others in the family, wearing more casual attire including a fancy hat which she hopes will help people recognize her as a classy woman in the case they are killed in a car accident. (character analysis) This demonstrates how worried she is about appearing respectable and how she would like to be specially treated compared to the rest of the family members. She repeats platitudes about how much more exact and better things used to be when speaking to Red Sam Butts. However, in the middle of the trip when they meet the Misfit, and he threatens to kill her, she is unprepared to face death.

The Grandmother repeatedly asserts that the Misfit must have good intentions even though the rest of her family is being taken into the woods and killed because she cannot accept that he might be as immoral as he appears. (character analysis) Until she extends a hand to the Misfit and briefly connects with him, she doesn't seem to recognize that these are her last moments on earth. Despite all the efforts the grandmother attempts however, he rains her with bullets leaving her unresponsive setting up an example of the need to never being self-centered but listen to others in making a decision.

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