A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O' Connor (Summary and Review) - Minute Book Report

• Report rights infringement
• published: 05 Aug 2013
• views: 15714

This is a quick summary and analysis of A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor. This channel discusses and reviews books, novels, and short stories through drawing...poorly. New Minute Book Reports are posted every week. Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Minute-Book-Reports/1148331925195691 This is a story about a family who is planning a road trip from Georgia to Florida. The grandmother, an old, talkative woman, really wants to go to Tennessee, but her son, Bailey, insists on Florida. Despite the grandmother's warnings of an escaped prisoner, The Misfit, Bailey, the grandmother, Bailey's wife, and three children, John Wesley, June Star, and a newborn, pack up and head out to Florida. As they are travelling, the grandmother mentions a nearby old house with treasure in it, which entices the family to investigate it and leave the road. However, when the grandmother realizes that the house she is thinking of is in Tennessee and not Georgia, she gets startled, causing Bailey to lose control of the car. The car tumbles off the back road and into a little ditch, but no one is hurt. As they assess the damage to the car, the family is approached by another car with three men. The men seem friendly, but are all carrying guns. Quickly, the grandmother recognizes one of the men as The Misfit. The Misfit instructs his two partners to take Bailey and John Wesley in the nearby woods and shoot them. Then he instructs them to take Bailey's wife with the newborn and June Star in the woods and shoot them as well. Meanwhile, the grandmother tells The Misfit that he's too good of a man to shoot an old lady. In the end, The Misfit shoots the grandmother. Through The Misfit, we see a person who has been worked by the prison system. His mind is murky and his thoughts, while interesting, leave the grandmother and readers questioning themselves about religious and philosophical ideals. But more importantly, the system has affected The Misfit to the point where he doesn't truly remember why he was incarcerated. Maybe time isn't the only thing that prisoners lose. Maybe to be truly institutionalized means that one experiences change, yet fails to understand why. One of the lingering questions at the end of the story is whether The Misfit is literally the grandmother's son or not. The author could have presented this scenario as more symbolic, but there are clues in the story that support this notion. Although not sure, The Misfit thinks that he was put in prison because he murdered his father, which does coincide with the absence of the grandmother's husband. At the end of the story, the grandmother also refers to The Misfit as her son. However, this could have been because he put on Bailey's blue shirt and she was beginning to panic. And while it is established that the grandmother recognizes Bailey as her only son, because the grandmother is very judgemental and old fashioned, she could have disowned The Misfit for his criminal past, which does technically leave her with only one son. As readers get to know the grandmother through prose and dialogue, she comes to represent a person who likes to live in the past. At the start of the story, she wants to go to Tennessee to see some old acquaintances. And while there is nothing wrong with that, she is so fixated with the past that the past is all she lives for. And it's from the grandmother that readers get the message of the story: Don't live in the past. Her comments about Blacks on the side of the road are derogatory and her conversation in the diner with the owner, while nostalgic, is an act of grasping for times that are no more. Time only moves forward and anyone who tries to live in the past is typically doomed. Through Minute Book Reports, hopefully you can get the plot and a few relevant discussion points in just a couple of minutes. Music by WingoWinston from newgrounds.com.