The setting in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” is in Atlanta, Georgia and the other half in a car heading to Florida. In the story, we are able to hear the thoughts of the grandmother. In the car she is telling her son Bailey, the plantation they are looking for “It’s not much farther,” and as she realizes the plantation was in Tennessee, “The thought was so embarrassing that she turned red in the face and her eyes dilated and her feet jumped up. ” This lets us know what the grandmother was thinking telling us the narration is third-person limited omniscient.
The tone used here at the beginning of the story is quite humorous. The exposition is that “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee. ” Bailey, her son, had decided that the whole family was set on going to Florida, so that would be their destination. The grandmother, very set in her ways, was going to try anything to get her way. After realizing Bailey wasn’t going to change his mind, the next morning, she was first out to the car and ready to go.
This was situational irony, she was the last who wanted to go on the trip, but the first to the car and ready to go. This then makes us wonder what her intentions are and what events will lead up next. The crisis, in which the cat sprang onto Bailey’s shoulders, resulting in him to lose control, and wreck the car, sets the whole family up for failure. The grandmother is to blame for bringing the cat and having them head out to a plantation, that didn’t exist there. The conflict starts as soon as the Misfit and the men with him approach the family.
We are unaware at first that one of the men is the Misfit, so we think the three men are going to help them. Shortly, after realizing they have guns, we further reevaluate what their purpose is, and how come they may have stopped. The next crisis occurs, after the grandmother recognizes that one of the men is the Misfit. She then exclaims it at once, “You’re The Misfit! ” He replies, “Yes’m,” “but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn’t of reckernized me. ” After this moment the grandmother and the Misfit keep the tension and conflict going as she then tries to convince him he is a good man.
The climax hits its point when the grandmother says “why you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my own children! ” She then reaches out and touches him on the shoulder. The Misfit “sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. ” The story shows symbolism in how the sky is “cloudless” indicating the grandmother has then died. The Misfit and the grandmother symbol contrast in each other. The tone used towards the end of the story is a more serious-realistic tone.
The resolution includes the Misfit sending the men to take the grandmother off with the others, “defenseless-looking” he then states, “She would have been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life. ” This is ironic seeming how the story’s title is “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. Knowing that a “Good Man” is just about impossible to find since there is no such thing as a person with no flaws or someone who is exactly perfect, so would he have been a “Good Man”, if someone was there to shoot him every minute of his life?
