A Good Man Is Hard to Find is a great tale whose artful use of language and form propel the reader towards an ambivalent end that demands reflection. This tale is a gripping example of art that requires no knowledge of its author or context. Of course there are references to the American South of the 50’s and earlier, the Mikado, and the Old Testament. However, even without these references, the story speaks to common human experience and questions of morality, and the role of the individual in society. Because I have written quite a bit, I have highlighted the major points.

The story begins with a negative construction regarding an individual’s WANT: the grandmother has no desire to go on a family trip to Florida, and she spends the first part of the story manipulating everyone so that she can go to Tennessee. At this point in the text, she is a harmlessly annoying old woman and the family appears to be caught up in the details of the mundane. We immediately get an image of a thin, elderly self-righteous mater familias (she is nameless) who claims that she is at peace with her conscience, unlike her son who she is effectively guilt-tripping to make him change his plans to suit hers. Her daughter-in-law and the baby are also nameless, but her son is Bailey (officer of justice?), her grandson is John Wesley (founder of the Methodist movement that encourages people to experience Christ personally), and her granddaughter is June Star (Venus, Light bearer, Lucifer and very Hollywood).

During the discussion about the vacation, the grandmother, father and children are reading the paper where the grandmother sees the story about the Misfit. The newspaper as a means of communication does not seem to encourage conversation between the family members. The minimal exchange that comes from the paper centers on modern life and its preoccupation with social hierarchy and wealth; the grandmother, say the son and daughter, won’t stay home “to be queen for a day” or “a million bucks.”

The grandmother refuses to stay home (to face herself?) but appears to have some redeeming features as she hides her cat, Pitty Sing or Pretty/Pity Thing (The Mikado), because she is concerned that he will miss her; however, we wonder who will miss whom? Her apparent concern for the cat is a mask for her selfishness. We soon learn that the grandmother is all about appearances. She is dressed like a lady in case she should die on the road. Her hat in particular represents her gentility, and her fear of being in an accident foreshadows the family’s tragedy (in which her hat is destroyed), as does the graveyard, the town Toomsboro, the “hearse-like automobile” and the “open mouth” of the woods where the wind later moves “like a long satisfies insuck of breath” (I love this line) when Bailey and his son are shot.

A key transition in the story occurs when they go from urban spaces to the country and pass Stone Mountain (Confederate sculpture and KKK base camp) about halfway into the paragraph. So we travel with the family through the billboards of American industry to a very colourful natural landscape. They are moving from society and all that comes with it, social morality, consumerism etc… to a world where these no longer hold sway.

This is a pivotal point because suddenly the grandmother doesn’t seem harmless anymore. They pass a black child and she wants to paint him as if he were a cow in a picturesque country field. The black boy is part of the natural scenery and hardly present. He does not “have things like we do.” He is physically outside the car, cut off from civilization and all things human, and she would like to keep him there in a painting. The grandmother now is engaging in a passive violence against the other that the reader finds unacceptable. The child waves at them, but they don’t acknowledge his existence and only open the window to dump their garbage.

The sighting of the child followed by a view of a plantation graveyard reminds the reader of the history of slavery in the US which has “Gone with the Wind,” a reference to the civil war that has become Hollywood entertainment, worlds away from the past and present realities of the oppressed. In other words not gone at all.

There is then a doubling effect when the children play a guessing game with the clouds. A cloud is first a cow and then a car. These images confound the black child with the children in the car who are now the observed. In other words, in this story, who is observing whom? The reader is part of the text.

The more the grandmother reveals her dependence on appearance, the more we realize that her idea of being a lady has nothing to do with being a decent human being. Her tale of Mr.EAT demonstrates how she equates goodness with position and wealth.

At the Tower (Tower of Babel which God shatters to create many languages out of one) they  lament the lack of “nice” people these days. The repetition of the words ‘trust’ and ‘good’ render the terms meaningless, especially when used by Red Sam (American Communist?), his wife and the grandmother. Their goodness does not extend to the chained monkey biting fleas off himself as “as if they were a delicacy.” (Echoes of navel gazing?)

The superficiality of the modern world comes up again with the treasure hidden in the grandmother’s imaginary house. She knows that the tale of the lost silver will interest the children who have been brought up to value material wealth. Later, when they are lost, the only shame the grandmother feels is not due to the fact that she lies to her family about the house but that she will be caught out. Morality it seems is a question of what you can get away with while appearing to be an upright citizen of the world.

More Doubling

Pitty Sing snarls before he causes the accident as the Misfit does later when saying there is “no pleasure but meanness”. The cat is the Misfit’s double in that he causes the family’s destruction. But Pitty Sing is also the grandmother because she is the one who recognizes the Misfit so that he must kill them. In other words, the grandmother and the Misfit are one and the same: individuals outside goodness. She is a false ‘lady’, and he with his good manners is a false gentleman. (She asks him to pray but does not pray herself, and he responds that Jesus has upset the balance – the punishment no longer matches the crime). The Misfit appears to be referring to the Christian belief that we are all born sinners; however, I think the problem is that the system’s/man’s interpretation of right and wrong does not always mean justice. Anyway, the Misfit is beyond concepts of good and evil. For him the sky has no sun and no cloud. The grandmother and Misfit are individuals who have chosen their own morality outside of their community. Both are taking care of number one.

The juxtaposition of the mundane and the uncanny grotesque create an ambivalence, which at the end of the text reflects the switching of roles that the Grandmother and the Misft play. The condemning woman becomes the condemned and the condemned convict becomes an executioner.

In this ambiguity, space opens up for a new perspective on the world. The grandmother for once thinks of someone else, and the other is no longer at a distance as she reaches out to touch the Misfit. She dies looking at a now cloudless sky. Similarly, the Misfit no longer sees pleasure in killing. He removes his glasses and with defenseless-looking eyes ‘sees’ both the grandmother’s epiphany and that killing is “no pleasure in life.”