A Good Man is Hard to Find


The short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is about a family who sets out to take a trip to Florida.  However, as they are driving to Florida, they decide to take a detour which leads to an encounter with three criminals who escaped from prison.  One of them was called “The Misfit”.

The main characters seem to be the grandmother and the Misfit.  I believe the story is about how difficult situations can give us an opportunity to change. In the beginning of the story, we see that the grandmother is manipulative as she tries to convince her son Bailey not to take them on the trip to Florida because she wants to go to Tennessee instead.  She also seems to be judgmental as she tells her grandchildren that in her time “children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else.  When they encounter The Misfit, and the grandmother recognizes him from the newspaper, she immediately starts telling him that he is good, that he comes from a good family, trying to convince him that he has good in him.   She tries to get him to ask Jesus for help, so that he can be redeemed, yet he is not really considering it.  He tells her he’s not good, but she continues because her hopes are that if she can convince him that he’s good he will turn from his “wicked ways” and spare her life.   

There was a moment when it seemed as if the Misfit showed remorse and may have changed.  When he talked about how he wished he was in the days that Jesus raised the dead.  He mentions how if he was there that he wouldn’t be the way he was.  When he said this to the grandmother, he said it in a cracked voice, almost as if he was getting choked up, and when she looked at him, she thought he looked as if he was going to cry.  However, true to the name of the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, we find that the Misfit did not seize the opportunity to become a good man.  Nevertheless, the grandmother did change during this test.  She was filled with compassion, something that she had not shown before in the story, and saw the Misfit as one of her babies, one of her own children.

We all go through trials in our lives that will test our characters. I believe trials help us to grow as people.  They may not be as extreme as this encounter was, but I have seen many people that I know either change during difficult times that they go through, sometimes for the better, while others choose not to take the opportunity to change.   

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