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In "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor, does the grandmother remain a static character or does she in any way change as the story...

O'Connor was a Roman Catholic whose writing was deeply influenced by her Christian theology. In "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," the difficult, annoying, manipulative grandmother, as unlikely a character as any to have the experience, undergoes a transformation that leads her to a state of grace at the end of the story.


The grandmother is aware that the Misfit and his gang have just killed her son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. She is...

O'Connor was a Roman Catholic whose writing was deeply influenced by her Christian theology. In "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," the difficult, annoying, manipulative grandmother, as unlikely a character as any to have the experience, undergoes a transformation that leads her to a state of grace at the end of the story.


The grandmother is aware that the Misfit and his gang have just killed her son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. She is desperately using the currency important in her world—money and status—to try to persuade the Misfit not to kill her. She appeals to him as "good man," saying that a man like him wouldn't hurt a lady like her. None of these appeals reaches him in the least. However, when the Misfit puts on her dead son's shirt, the grandmother has a moment of extraordinary grace in which he seems to her no different from her son, and she reaches towards him with genuine compassion and love. In that moment, she cares about the man who has just killed her family, and in the next second he shoots her. There's nevertheless a flash of connection with the Misfit, as the grandmother dies in a state of love and grace, dead, but a transformed person. As the text says:



... the grandmother's head cleared for an instant. She saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. 



Whether this event will in any way change the Misfit, we never know.

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