A Good Man Is Hard to Find: The Misfit as a Reactive Criminal and a Lost Prophet - Research Paper Example

April 24, O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find The Misfit as a Reactive Criminal and a Lost Prophet In “A Good Man isHard to Find” by O’Connor, the Misfit is a wanted criminal, who chances upon a family when they crash their family car in the woods. The Misfit has a moral code, where he kills without remorse, and so he orders the entire family executed. However, he is also concerned of his spiritual emptiness. Through his talk with the grandmother, he reveals that he does not know for sure whether Jesus really raised the dead or not. His philosophy of existence is to be cruel, in order to give some purpose in his life. The Misfit constantly questions the meaning of life and his role in it. He renames himself as the Misfit as a consequence of his belief that his punishment did not fit his crime. These moral questions suggest that the Misfit is not entirely bad. He knows that he is far from perfect, but he is not the worst either. So is the Misfit an accredited villain? This essay argues that the Misfit is not a feared criminal. The Misfit is not a feared criminal, because he has not done anything wrong in his life that is not a reaction to what others do or think about him, and he can also be considered as a lost prophet. The Misfit is not a feared criminal, because he does what is wrong due to self-prophecy attitudes. He narrates to the grandmother that his father sees him as a beast: “My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters” (O’Connor). It is interesting that his own father views his son so negatively. One of the most influential factors of criminality is the family. Apparently, the Misfit comes from a family who does not teach him good values and conduct. This family also berates him instead of supporting him as a human being. The Misfit confesses to the grandmother that his father is a felon himself: “Daddy was a card himself…You couldnt put anything over on him. He never got in trouble with the Authorities though. Just had the knack of handling them” (O’Connor). His father is a criminal too, a bad role model for his children. It is possible that when he describes his son as a dog, he is referring to his breed too. Having this kind of parent will increase chances that the Misfit will also be a criminal too. In addition, the Misfit illustrates that he was a good boy before. He was a “gospel singer” before and “plowed Mother Earth” (O’Connor). He is once a decent man, but he changes to become who is father expected him to be- a dog and not a human being. The belief that he is a dog has deeply seeped into his psyche that he becomes nothing else than that. In addition, the Misfit also becomes a criminal as a reaction to the unfair society he lives in. He remembers racial discrimination in a fleeting manner, although the fact that he remembers them shows that these scenes affected him. He says he saw someone “burnt alive once” and “a woman flogged” (O’Connor). These are mostly likely black slaves who are treated like animals. Since he is a dog and feels like one, he must have felt one with these people. In order to avert that future tragedy of being killed, he resorts to killing. It is better to be the killer than the killed. Nevertheless, the Misfit feels that the crimes he did is not equal to his punishment. While jailed, he says that he has “[forgotten] what [he had] done.” He tells the grandmother: “I set [sic] there and set [sic] there, trying to remember what it was I done and I aint recalled it to this day ” (O’Connor). He defends himself and says that he did not kill his father. It is important to note that he does not feel guilty for this crime, and yet he suffers the most because of it. If this is true, his experience of social injustice has turned the Misfit into the worse breed of criminal- a dog with no conscience, because he finds no meaning in this unjust society he lives in. The Misfit believes that he is not a true criminal, since he thinks that he is empty inside and whatever he takes is not enough to fill it. He says to the grandmother: “Nobody had nothing I wanted” (O’Connor). This statement reveals that he is a man with nothing and he takes nothing from people who leave absurd lives. In the essay “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Kaplan argues that the main theme of the story is receiving grace at the time of death. She believes that the grandmother’s “maternal compassion and concern” (2) has allowed her to see the Misfit as a lost son. The grandmother is also a lost soul, but she understands the meaning of her life during her last moments of life. Kaplan uses O’Connor’s words to defend her argument. O’Connor says: “…the old lady’s gesture, like the mustard-seed, will grow to be a great crow-filled tree in the Misfit’s heart, and will be enough of a pain to him there to turn him into the prophet he was meant to become” (Kaplan 3). Kaplan also stresses that O’Connor’s writing technique focuses on “hostile” characters that can shed light to the meaning of grace (3). The Misfit may be one of the most horrifying characters ever, but it is through him that the grandmother receives hope and redemption from her sins (Kaplan 3). Unfortunately, the Misfit does not receive the grace that the grandmother gets. He remains empty until the end of the story, which underscores the absurd nature of his life and life in general. The Misfit tries to understand the mystery of evil and his evil, which makes him different from other criminals who do crime without further reflecting on their spirituality. Through the essay “Flannery OConnors Misfit and the Mystery of Evil,” Desmond argues that the Misfit is not pure good or evil. Instead, the Misfit should be seen as someone who thinks that there is something in good he will reap in everything that he does and “somehow answer to his need” (129). Desmond explores the spiritual predicament of the Misfit that is revealed through his conversation with the grandmother. The Misfit wants to understand the “mystery of evil,” including his own evil, which is the conflict within himself and his God (Desmond 130). The Misfit says: “Jesus shown [sic] everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadnt committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me” (O’Connor). He is saying that he does not believe in God because he has not seen His miracles himself. Still, the fact that he ponders on it means that he has doubts in his doubts. Like Desmond, Bandy believes that the Misfit struggles in understanding the difference between good and evil. In “One of My Babies: The Misfit and the Grandmother,” Bandy focuses on the Grandmother, however, and argues that he will trust the art and not the artist. This refers to O’Connor directly stating that the grandmother receives grace before she dies. Bandy, however, argues that the Grandmother does not receive any form of grace, which is the absurdity of her life. She dies the same as she has lived- an ignorant and shallow woman with no real faith. At the same time, Bandy shows that the Misfit has something more concrete than the grandmother, which is his spiritual predicament. The Misfit explains why he is the Misfit: “…because I cant make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment” (O’Connor). He compares himself to Jesus. He cannot make sense of Jesus and his Godliness, and he also cannot make sense of himself and his evil. In “Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Spoiled Prophet,’” Hendricks argues that the Misfit is “a lost prophet,” because he does not appreciate that grace is essentially at work in the grandmother’s gesture (Hendricks 209). He thinks that “because of her hypocrisy and humanness and banality” the grandmother cannot “be a medium for Grace” (Hendricks 209). Because of this belief that grace cannot flow through humanity, the Misfit rejects the opportunity to truly understand God’s grace and love for him (Hendricks 209). O’Connor tells John Hawkes that the Misfit should be able to implore to Jesus, but society has shown the kind of Jesus who is not a true mediator, but more of an “existential challenge”: Haze [Hazel Motes] knows what the choice is and the Misfit knows what the choice is—either throw away everything and follow Him or enjoy yourself by doing some meanness to somebody, and in the end there’s no real pleasure in life, not even in meanness. (Hendricks 209). The Misfit cannot believe in Jesus through faith alone. Like he says, he has not witnessed God’s miracles. He cannot believe the unseen, so he chooses to “do meanness” (O’Connor). However, the Misfit confesses to Bobby Lee that: “It’s no pleasure in life” to kill people. The Misfit is not murdering family out of “meanness” or unhappiness, as he suggests earlier (Hendricks 208). Instead, he feels he is doing the world a favor by killing them, since life is absurd. He acts as the judge and savior, prophet and God (Hendricks 208). He has brought the sword that will massacre people like the grandmother and her family, because they have not pursued a profound spiritual life (Hendricks 208). He will keep on killing then, because his life is meaningless and so are other people’s lives. The Misfit is a killer who reacts to his society. He fulfills what others expect of him; they think he is a criminal and a dog, and so he becomes one. He is also a lost prophet, so he kills without taking pleasure from it. It is through killing that these people are relieved from their meaningless existence. Moreover, the Misfit misinterprets the grandmother’s touch on his shoulders as a gesture of superficiality. He does not believe that Jesus can act through the grandmother. Therefore, instead of being redeemed, he becomes a killer with no real purpose, except to execute his meaningless duties as a criminal. The Misfit is not to be feared, because he is an empty vessel, a human being without God and humanity. Works Cited Bandy, Stephen C. “`One of My Babies: The Misfit and the Grandmother.” Studies in Short Fiction 33.1 (1996): 107-117. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. Literary Reference Center. Desmond, John. “Flannery OConnors Misfit and the Mystery of Evil.” Renascence 56.2 (2004): 129-137. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. Literary Reference Center. Hendricks, T. W. “Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Spoiled Prophet.’” Modern Age 51.3/4 (2009): 202-210. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. Academic Search Complete. Kaplan, Carola M. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Masterplots II: Short Story Series (Jan. 2004): 1-3. Web. 20 Apr. 2012. Literary Reference Center. O’Connor, Flannery. A Good Man is Hard to Find. Web. 18 Apr. 2012. < http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~surette/goodman.html>. Read More