How should we define a good man? A man who abides by the law and doesn’t commit any crimes? A man of regligion who believes in God sincerely? A man who has good manners and be responsible to his family? As a matter of fact, there does not exist a standard for us to define what the “good” is. The law and regulations are external constraints put on people’s social activities, to some extent, religion has the same function for people who have religious belief. Everyone has his hidden sins, A Good Man Is Hard to Find reveals that people are utterly ignorant of the nature of crime, at the same time, it really is a story of weird and darkness.

The grandmother tried to behave good-hearted and she thought herself of integrity and righteous with a sense of responsibility. In fact, she is a hypocritical and selfish person, a stupid grumbler. She hoped everything can lead to a result she wanted, to attain the goal, she even fabricated lies to bring her grandkids to the lure then forced her son to drive back to the old plantation which resulted directly in the tragedy. She reminded her son not drive too fast, she is law-abiding because she was afraid there were patrolmen hiding nearby. When she saw a little black boy standing in the door of a shack, she explained with a sense of superiority the reason that he had no pants and she had an aesthetic feeling that she would like to paint the miserable scene in a picture, the grandmother is actually a heatless person without the sympathy inside her. Her love for the life and her sincerity for God are just based on her benefit not being harmed.

The Misfit, the degenerate angel used to be a gospel singer, those unfair penalties on him made him disappointed with God and life. He looked well-mannered and soft-spoken, but he is cruel and he has a quick insight into character. He noticed the grandmother was indulged in her strong self-satisfaction and expansion that she needed some lesson at the cost of blood to sober her. “She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”(page 133) He thought more deeply about the religion and God than grandmother, although the latter was the one who persuaded him to pray and do not harm to her. The Misfit give himself this name, he is the incarnation of Satan, he said God made everything off balance, so did he. As to him, killing people makes no difference with stealing a type, the reason he killed people or set fire to others’ house is he wanted to testify whether God can raise the dead, he has confusion about the significance of religious beliefs. At last, he said “there is no real pleasure in life”, he didn’t grandmother’s death as fun, he knew clearly the meaning of violence and death, this makes him look a little bit reasonable, he was not a psycho, he was trying to help people realize their own sins. That’s another bizarre and satirical part of this story.

Another important point in the story is different values of three generations. The grandmother is a person with old-fashioned values, she tried to educate her grandkids with the declining southern traditional values, apparently, that doesn’t work. She focuses on appearance and external politeness, her exquisite dress has another function, “in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady”(page 118). Those values are hollow and somehow meaningless. As for her son and her daughter-in-law, they are apathetic to their life, there is a lack of communication between them and their family, in the society of high-speed industrialization, materialism causes people to forget spiritual values, to choose an silent, insensitive attitude to their life. John and June, the third generation, judge things by the standards of money amount, “She won’t stay at home for a millions bucks.”(page 118), ”I wouldn’t live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks!”(page121) and June said she would never marry a man that just brought her a watermelon on Saturday, etc.. Lacking of the sense of right and wrong, good and evil, they felt regretful there was nobody killed in the accident, material and adventurous desires are the biggest characteristic of this generation. The cohesion of family is destroyed quietly, the alienation and estrangement are obvious, the modern American society is in an ethical crisis, O’Connor tried to awake people’s consciousness from this crisis through the analysis of the essence of those abnormal phenomena and severe problems in her works.