The Good Man

            In the story called A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor we see a family take a trip to east Tennessee. On this trip the audience can see what the grandma thinks is a “good man”. The first person she references as a good man is Red Sammy from the restaurant that they stopped to eat at. Red Sammy begins to describe a situation where these men drove up and Red Sammy let them charge their gas. Red Sammy says “Said they worked at the mill and you know I let them fellers charge the gas they bought? Now why did I do that?” (O’Connor 122). Then the grandma responds “Because you’re a good man!” (O’Connor 122). Why does the grandma believe he is a good man? Apparently the grandma’s definition of a good man is someone that is easily fooled. Just because a person has bad judgment does not make them a good person. Being gullible and letting people take advantage of you is not being a good person. I believe these qualities make a person weak, but do not necessarily make them a bad man. The only reason I would believe the grandma’s definition of a god man in this situation is if she believed that Red Sammy did this out of the goodness of his heart, but by reading the text I do not come to this conclusion.  

            Another person the grandma calls a “good man” is the Misfit, the man who escaped jail and is on the run. To me this is ironic because this is a man who has committed a crime and wanted is what the grandma calls a good man. In context I understand why the grandma calls the Misfit a good man. She does so by saying “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people,” (O’Connor 127). The Misfit responds to this by acknowledging he did come from “nice people”, but does not agree right away that he is a good man. The Misfit states that “Nome I ain’t a good man, but I ain’t the worst in the world either,” (O’Connor 128). Even the Misfit does not believe he is a good man. If this is so then it proves that the grandma’s belief on what a good man is not right. In the end the grandma’s definition of a good man is changed. She believes that a criminal who is about to kill her family is a good man. The grandma even tries to persuade the Misfit that he should not have this name because he is a good person and she can tell by just looking at him. Faced with death the grandma changes her definition of a good man to try to charm her way out of this situation by complementing the Misfit. The grandma feels the pressure under the gun to try to complement her way out of death, but the Misfit realizes the truth behind her comments. The Misfit states “She would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life,” (O’Connor 133). Not only is the grandma’s view on what a good man wrong, but is also proven to be a bad woman based on the observation by the Misfit. He realized that without the pressure of death she wouldn’t be handing out compliments so easily. In the end of this story we see how conflicted and wrong the grandma’s view on what a makes a good man.