Flannery O"Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard To Find"-Question (The "Misfit")

[Dan_Norder]

@Miller

I think it was a rhetorical question - try reading it as one sentence: “A Christ figure who offers salvation by killing you!?”

And I’d have had the same response. Christ is supposed to God incarnate, God offered salvation by killing Christ, and the only salvation he offers can’t be expressed until after you have died, and on top of that he’s also the one who is said to control when people die. The Christ figure offers salvation by killing you, yes.

Comparative literature works better when people are actually familiar with the literature being compared.

[Miller]

Admittedly, I’m not a Christian, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.

[stofsky]

@Sampiro

@stofsky

O’Connor isn’t trustworthy regarding what she says about her stories, any more than any other author is–the fallacy of Authorial Intent, if you will.

Intentional fallacy.

Yeah, I went blank. It’s been a few years since I left the ivory tower.

[stofsky]

@Tarwater

I don’t think O’Connor ever tried to fool people into thinking she was writing “simple, superficial stories,” and I think the only people laboring under that kind of interpretation are those deceived by the unalloyed straight-forwardness of her writing and plotting. But like I suggested, I’m familiar enough with intentional fallacy to disavow the idea that her understanding of the story should trump a reader’s own interpretation.

However, I thought it was note-worthy because the interpretation of The Misfit as a Christ-like figure, while popular among literary critics, isn’t nearly pat enough for me to find satisfactory. I think it’s a mistake to call The Misfit a Christ-like figure – a mistake that arises from a mistaken understanding of Christ as a figure solely of salvation. It’s easy to generalize that Christ = Savior, therefore The Misfit = Savior = Christ. But to make that leap is an oversimplification of Christ and his teachings and his role in Christianity (and Catholicism specifically). And for me, it diminishes The Misfit’s personal struggle with Christ’s involvement in his personal salvation, which is clearly essential to the moral and religious dilemma of the story. It’s more appropriate to call The Misfit a redemptive figure. Calling him a Christ-figure is tempting but it attaches to him a ton of unnecessary baggage, and for me, it’s indefensible in the context of the story, unless you’re willing to stretch the meaning of “Christ-figure” and over-interpret his interaction with the grandmother.

I guess it depends on how much you require alignment between the Biblical Christ story and the character. The literary critics you dismiss and I don’t need as much. If you view Christ as a bringer of salvation (we agree the Misfit fills this role, I think) and a questioner of authority, and add little subtle clues like:

I was buried alive,

I don’t think it’s a real stretch to see the parallels.

[25.1327_Octopi]

I just re-read the story in the link provided by Sampiro. I haven’t read it since college, part of a literature class, where I recall the suggestion that The Misfit was a stand-in for Satan, which I took for granted at the time. Perhaps apropos considering the relationship with (and probable murder of) his father, and his imprisonment - and his questioning of authority.

What’s interesting to note in my re-reading is that the grandmother is not named, nor is the children’s mother (never referred to as Bailey’s wife, so I am assuming they are unmarried?). All the men, including The Misfit’s (the article is capitalized throughout*) cronies, Bailey, and Bailey’s son, are named, as is Bailey’s daughter. Even the cat is named.

Also the vivid descriptions of colors.

I chuckled as I read:

“The old lady settled herself comfortably, removing her white cotton gloves and putting them up with her purse on the shelf in front of the back window. The children’s mother still had on slacks and still had her head tied up in a green kerchief, but the grandmother had on a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print. Her collars and cuffs were white organdy trimmed with lace and at her neckline she had pinned a purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet. In case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.”

Now that’s foreshadowing. The last line almost comes off as a punchline to the paragraph.

A lot is said of how awful the grandmother is, but the whole family, at best, do not seem like a bunch of folks with whom I’d like to drive to Florida. The kids are brats, Bailey is weak-willed and ornery (with reason, I suppose), and the children’s mother is described (in what may be my favorite line) as having a face “as broad and innocent as a cabbage”, suggesting she isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

And what’s with the monkey?

Anyway, my initial reactions now having read it after a long spell. I enjoyed it. Thanks for the link.

• • first name The, last name Misfit?

[carnivorousplant]

@Dan_Norder

Christ is supposed to God incarnate, God offered salvation by killing Christ, and the only salvation he offers can’t be expressed until after you have died, and on top of that he’s also the one who is said to control when people die. The Christ figure offers salvation by killing you, yes.

No.

[Miller]

@astorian

The Misfit is a man who sees, as many people in the modern secular era don’t, that in the absence of a loving God, life is pretty much meaningless.

He also sees, however, that the presence of a loving God makes murder meaningless. I think that’s why he’s so fixated on Jesus returning the dead to life. If God can restore life like that, then why is killing someone a sin? If God has a problem with it, he can just bring them back. If he doesn’t, isn’t it his fault, and not the killer’s, that the person is dead?

[Koxinga]

I only read the story for the first time this year, and was curious to see what commentary or criticism there was online. The most interesting things I’ve read about it tend to focus on the passage almost at the very end:

His voice seemed about to crack and 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. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. Then he put his gun down on the ground and took off his glasses and began to clean them.

which is pretty weird on the face of it, and seems to carry some import.

I read one analysis that said that (contrary to her own beliefs, and the ostensible theme she identified for the story) O’Connor was identifying self-centered, superficial and prideful religious attitudes (the grandmother) as being the fundamental origin of nihilism (the Misfit).

BTW, foreshadowing in stories tends only to make me roll my eyes, but this bit at the very beginning kind of haunted me for days:

The grandmother offered to hold the baby and the children’s mother passed him over the front seat to her. She set him on her knee and bounced him and told him about the things they were passing. She rolled her eyes and screwed up her mouth and stuck her leathery thin face into his smooth bland one. Occasionally he gave her a faraway smile. They passed a large cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island. “Look at the graveyard!” the grandmother said, pointing it out. “That was the old family burying ground. That belonged to the plantation.”

“Where’s the plantation?” John Wesley asked.

“Gone With the Wind” said the grandmother. “Ha. Ha.”

[Humble_Servant]

@25.1327_Octopi

What’s interesting to note in my re-reading is that the grandmother is not named, nor is the children’s mother (never referred to as Bailey’s wife, so I am assuming they are unmarried?).

The story is in most ways seen from the grandmother’s point of view–I read it that she’s the one who thinks, “the children’s mother,” scornfully, as in she’s no real daughter of mine nor is she good enough to marry my son (the MIL v. DIL problem); this is also partly why the grandmother does not need to be named–you don’t name yourself when you are thinking/narrating; (there’s also a universalizing thing going on too).