Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard To Find” presents a family going on a road trip, with an unfortunate ending. The main character of this story is the Grandmother, a self-centered, manipulative individual in the beginning of the story changing into a heartfelt person while taking her last breaths before the Misfit ends her. When she realizes that she can sense her fate she starts to realize traits they have shared despite their many differences.
The grandmothers initial act of self centeredness occurs at the very beginning of the story. It opens with her thoughts about wanting to go and see her “connections” in Tennessee, completely blowing off the fact that the family planned to go to Florida for their roadtrip. “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing every chance to change Bailey’s mind” (O’Conner 495).
Here is when the grandmother brings up the misfit being on the loose to try to persuade Bailey from wanting to go to florida anymore. Cleary, right off the bat you can see the grandmother has little to no consideration of Bailey’s idea of going to florida. She wants her wishes to be fulfilled before anyone of the her family’s.
Next how the grandmother dresses also depicts her personality. She wears nice clothing compared to the family so that if they were to get into an accident and her body was recovered on the side of the road they would know that she was a lady. “In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (496)
Here the grandmother reveals that she looks at people by how they appear on the outside, not by their personality. This shows that she’s manipulative, chances are if she sees a person that is very well dressed and they appear to be wealthy she would most likely be very friendly, but if she were to meet a low income looking person she would most likely be rude because the person probably has nothing to offer. As the narrative continues the grandmother shows her ideas that she learned from growing up in the south, naturally, she has a fixed-view on racism.
She thinks blacks are inferior and belong in a lower class, in a small conversation with June Star they talking about a young negro boy, the young boy has no pants on. “Oh look at the cute little pickaninny! She said and pointed to a Negro child standing in the door of a shack… He didn’t have any britches on, June Star said. He probably didn’t have any,… Little n***ers in the country don’t have things like we do.” As seen her attachment to the south and the slavery days still strongly influence her.
