The Grandmother In A Good Man Is Hard To Find

“It isn’t a soul in this green world of God’s that you can trust” (680 O’Connor), as said by the Grandmother of Flannery O’Connor’s short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find. This story provides a snippet in the life of a Grandmother, her adult son, and his family on a road trip. This story illustrates the relationships between the dysfunctional family members, and their encounter with an escaped murderer. In this story, the grandmother portrays a very put-together, wise, and altogether superior older woman. But, her omniscience serves as a facade for her ulterior, selfish motives. The story A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor depicts a compelling character that shows her controlling and omniscient tone through her actions and word choice towards others, but under her facade she has egocentric and manipulative rationale. …show more content…
The grandmother uses great effort in this story to use her mental and religious superiority to enlighten the murderer, the Misfit, and prevent her own death. She takes the risk of commanding her captor what to do, with the possible consequence of fatal result: “‘If you would pray,’ the old lady said, ‘Jesus would help you” (686). The grandmother selfishly tries to control the Misfit and provide a solution (praying) for his problems using her own supercilious insight. In addition to her pleading for mercy with the command of praying, she also tries to guilt him into refraining from oppressing and harming women: “Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady,” (686). She attempts to shame the Misfit and force him to think about the consequences of his actions of harming a proper lady. She tries to edify him to follow with the norm of the masculine duty of respecting and protecting woman. Unfortunately, her manipulative tactics toward him were not effective, since he later murdered

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