An Analysis on Change

Earlier this semester, we read Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” a story that initially serves as a gruesome reminder of the dangers of senility. That being said, however, the story does have some oddly poignant moments having to do with morality, and ends, charmingly enough, with a dialogue that includes a sobering comment on man’s ability to change, with which I am inclined to agree wholeheartedly. Consider The Misfit’s remark about the grandmother at the last. As I interpreted it, it seems to say that people are capable of seeming almost redeemable during some situations-but these are changes that don’t last in the long run. Essentially, people really don’t change.

I suppose I’d fancy to deal with that specific line in the story first, then work back. As it goes, the line read “She would have been a good woman,’ The Misfit said, ‘if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” What merits my strong interest in the line to this point is his implication that this one experience, had she survived, would not have had the power to change the grandmother. Instead, he seems to believe that the only way she would have actually been a good woman was if somebody had been there to shoot her every second of her life. This part of the story is also notable because it is where The Misfit snaps back into the character he was introduced as, versus whatever his body language indicated he was as his conversation with the old bat progressed. In a sense, both of them changed-The Misfit, with his voice cracking, and the grandmother, as she actually forgave him-ever so briefly, during this experience. In the end though, one reverted, while the other was shot three times in the chest.

Another interesting dimension this story takes, I think, is not just the personal stagnation, but stagnation of status, something I think again is most apparent with the grandmother and The Misfit. Starting with the grandmother again, she had been a pitiful object of disrespect from the very beginning, directly so by the children-and myself, if that counts-and indirectly by her son and his wife, who do nothing but barely tolerate her. Her dynamic as an almost childlike object of inconvenience remains consistent from the initial dialogue with the children, through the cat and her obsessions of being seen as a lady, to her very death, I think, which seemed fitting in its own way. The Misfit as well maintains a demeanor as a harrowed, bored, slightly depressed man against the world, as is apparent in his dialogue and, in the end, the lack of effect the grandmother’s speech-which did move from merely begging for her life in the end-had on him. Note, that’s not to say that the speech had no effect, as he did shoot her three times quickly-a rather emotional killing-versus an execution, but the end result was the same, and he entered and exited the story the same in some great cosmic scheme, as did all the characters.

I’ll preface this with the statement that I may be slightly biased already, as I agree in general with the notion that people can’t truly change, but, I think that the short story does make a rather compelling argument. As compelling an argument as a story so short could make, at any rate. The most compelling and obvious arguments for come from the characters, as noted before, but another comes from the dialogue itself, something I find fascinating. Whether or not this is an argument for or against is really open to interpretation, but the line(s) of dialog I want to focus on here are when The Misfit is talking about his past. He says that he became the way he was when he was first put in jail. At first, this guy states that he didn’t know why he was there, saying, “I set there and set there, trying to remember what it was I done and I ain’t recalled it to this day.” Though, when pressed, he offers up the additional reasoning, saying, “It was a head-doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy but I known that for a lie.”

Let’s consider the two possible scenarios here. First, let’s assume that he’s lying, and that he killed his father. If that were the case, then from the beginning he was a murderer, and is blaming others for what he is, something he continues to do throughout the story, with lines like: “Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap while the other ain’t punished at all?” For the other route, you might think to say he was wrongly imprisoned, but I would disagree because of the existence of papers and his own admission of “…somewhere along the line I done something wrong and got sent to the penitentiary,” something brushed off, but still relevant, because he admits his own wrongdoing anyway before proceeding to blame the system. If that were the case, he still was a wrongdoer to some extent, and while in this scenario it could feasibly escalate from something small to something large, like murder, he still uses others to justify his actions. I’d say that even if he had done nothing at all, passively playing some cosmic victim is the main thing that causes his actions, so whatever his past, he is the same man in the story’s timeframe as the one he wistfully recalls from his younger days, something further validated with the line first mentioned: “She would have been a good woman…if there had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life”.

I suppose the story follows The Misfit, he being the most fleshed out character, so it is fitting my arguments do the same. I think that The Misfit shows, through actions and words, that while we can crack, who we are, who we think we are, and the lot we choose for ourselves in life remain relatively unchanged throughout our lives. That notion is backed up by the grandmother, who serves the story as an interesting and ever-so-briefly changing character in a surprisingly unforgettable way.

O'Connor, Flannery. "A Good Man is Hard to Find."

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