Reading Response Journal #2

'"Listen," the grandmother almost screamed "I know you're a good man. You don't look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!"' (O'Connor 15)

This quote from O'Connor's piece titled "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" encompasses the fear and urgency the grandmother has been trying to communicate about the fact that good men are hard to come by these days and that you can't always trust everybody.  Throughout this story the grandmother, probably unintentionally, was acting as though she was of a higher class or better then the rest of her family: with the way that she dressed and how she described her life growing up in Tennessee.  The other family members didn't always pay attention to her, especially her son Bailey.  Her granddaughter, June Star, however seemed to exhibit some similar traits of that of her grandmothers: "I wouldn't live in a broken-down place like this for a million bucks!" (7) June Star is portraying the same behaviors as the grandmother and saying she is of a higher caliber. The grandmother was doubtful from the very beginning about going to Florida because she feared the "Misfit" man who had escaped from prison will find them, she would much rather go to her home state of Tennessee. As they are driving through Georgia she recalls a house that she used to visit and convinced Baily to turn around and stop there.  However because she so badly wants to visit Tennessee it is no surprise that she soon realizes that that is where the house is and not Georgia.  On the way to try and find this "house" the family is in a terrible car accident and the Misfit just so happens to come across them.  The grandmother is very fearful but tries to convince him that if he just prayed God will help him and his life will turn around.  The Misfit begins to open up and shares the great things that he did in the past and he is not sure what he did to deserve ending up in prison.  The grandmother feels as though she is making a break through and connecting with him, but in the back of her mind she is terrified. She says to him "Why your one of my babies" (21)  The misfit goes into complete shock and kills her.   This whole story the grandmother was weary about this man and when she was actually confronted with him she began to open up and try to change him.  However, she should have never given him any sort of sign that she trusted him because that frightened him and made him retreat back to him old sinister self. As a man named Red Sam stated earlier in the passage "These days you don't know who to trust." (7)

Even though the title of this story is called "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" could the grandmother possibly be insinuating that a good and proper lady is hard to find? Because throughout the story she kept on referring to herself as "a lady":  "In case of an accident anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know she was a lady" (3) "I know you wouldn't shoot a lady!" (20)  Is she also trying to make a statement that good women are hard to find?

-Katelyn Palmer