A Good Man is Hard to Find - 9/7 Reading Response Journal

The story focuses more on the grandmother’s viewpoints and how she wanted to visit Tennessee instead of going to Florida. Then, she showed her son an article about a dangerous felon called “The Misfit” that escaped prison and was heading towards Florida, to change his mind. As they carry on with their journey a terrible accident took place in which Bailey’s wife gets a cut in her face and breaks a shoulder. The car came to rest in a ditch on the side of the road. At this point, the children were on the floor and the old woman was under the dashboard. The old woman then remembered that the plantation she visited was in Tennessee, not Georgia. After sometime as everybody was sitting in the car, she stood up and waved her arms at a black hearse driving toward them.

After the black car stopped, two young men and the driver got out of the car and were carrying guns. The old woman recognized the driver as the Misfit because she had seen a photo of him in the paper. After the two young men leave with Bailey and his son because they have to talk about something in the woods, the old lady is left alone with the Misfit. The old woman told him he could live a better life if he really wanted to and nobody would be chasing him all the time. The Misfit said he has done almost everything in his life. He was a soldier, gospel singer, husband, undertaker, railroad worker and farmer. The old woman continually told him that he needs to pray, although he had already told her that he doesn’t pray. He then said that he can’t remember why he went to prison but he knew that a therapist told him that he had killed his father but the Misfit claimed that his father died of the flu in 1919. The two young men, the misfit’s accomplices, return from the woods. One has Bailey’s shirt that had bright blue parrots. The Misfit puts the shirt on then sends June Star to her mother and the baby off to the woods with the boys. The Misfit and the old woman are now the only ones next to the car. When the old woman tells him that Christ will help him, he compares himself to Christ, as he too was punished wrongfully. He called himself The Misfit because the severity of the punishment exceeded the crime he did.
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..There was another pistol shot, and the old woman begged for her life saying she’ll give The Misfit all her money. Then, two more pistol shots ring out. The Misfit then said he wished he knew for certain whether Christ did or did not raise the dead. If he had known, he said, “I wouldn’t be like I am now.” He looks as if he is about to cry and the old woman reaches out and touches him. The Misfit pulls back and shoots her in the chest three times. When Hiram and Bobby Lee returned, they looked down at the woman’s face, which was smiling. The Misfit then told them to dispose of her body in the woods, where the other bodies are lying.

Ali Al-Saadi