“[The grandmother] saw the man’s face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest.” (O’Connor).
After reading the story, this part remains in readers’ heads and makes them replay all the characters’ previous actions in their thoughts repeatedly. Perhaps it was this passage that served the emergence of various interpretations of the conclusion and perpetuated the story in the category of American classics. What in those words makes the story so unique? It may be the hope that settled into the description of The Misfit, who for a moment seems to start crying, and lasted until the period in the sentence in which the grandmother touched his shoulder. The quintessence of this hope is expressed in the exclamation, “Why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children!” (O’Connor). At this point, the reader’s heart begins to beat faster, naively excepting in a couple of phrases to read about the piety of a bad person, the escaped criminal. However, O’Connor, in her usual manner, returns to reality roughly. The moment of hope did not last long, but after all, even in the title of the story, the author warned, “Good man is hard to find.” The grandmother’s words are most likely caused by the Misfit putting on her son’s shirt. A moment of shock is, however, inevitable when reading these lines. The reader suddenly sees the familiar stubborn grandmother in a new light – she seems kind and loving to the criminal even though she is on the verge of death. Thus, the strangely hopeful and full of love part of the story makes the literary work meaningful and long-lasting.
Work Cited
O’Connor, Flannery. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories. Mariner Books, 1977.