A Good Man is Hard to Find

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1955

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Literary Devices

Foreshadowing

Foreshadowing is one of the most prominent literary devices used in this story. For example, at the very beginning, the grandmother warns the family that The Misfit is on the loose and could pose a danger. She tells Bailey that she “wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal on the loose. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did” (Paragraph 1). This comment foreshadows the family’s meeting and ultimately being killed by The Misfit.

Later, in the car, the grandmother wears her best clothes and hat so that “in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (Paragraph 12). This narration foreshadows the grandmother’s death by the side of the road as well as her final conversation with The Misfit in which she tries to use her status as a lady to save herself. On the trip, the family passes “by a cotton field with five or six graves fenced in the middle of it, like a small island” (Paragraph 22). There are six passengers in the car, including the baby, foreshadowing their deaths.

Later, Red Sammy tells the family that “a good man is hard to find” and warns them not to trust anyone. This is an ominous warning, foreshadowing the family’s dark fate. Interestingly, this foreshadowing could indicate that the family should not have trusted The Misfit, but it also could refer to the family having trusted the grandmother when she pushed them to go visit the plantation house.

Irony

There is a substantial amount of dark irony in the story. For example, the grandmother warns the family of the danger of The Misfit purely to try to get her own way, and then later, in coercing the family to get her own way, she leads them toward the very Misfit against whom she warned.

Also ironic is the grandmother defining what makes a good man when she herself demonstrates that she is not a good person at heart. For example, she manipulates her family members throughout the story and proves herself to be a racist and classist. However, she then appeals to The Misfit as a good man. Contributing to this irony is the fact that The Misfit confirms that he comes from good people, saying: "God never made a finer woman than my mother and my daddy's heart was pure gold” (Paragraph 88). It is highly ironic that he then ended up not just as a murderer but one accused of murdering this same father.

Foil

In many ways, the grandmother and The Misfit are foils of one another, as essentially the protagonist and antagonist of the story. Both have deeply held Christian beliefs, and, in their conversation, they display similar manners and ways of speaking. It is implied by the Misfit that his upbringing in a good family may not have been very different than hers.

However, the grandmother is focused on the appearance of goodness and being perceived as the lady she believes herself to be. In contrast, The Misfit is much more pragmatic and focused on the reality of the situation. The characters are most clearly seen to be foils of one another when they discuss Jesus. The grandmother tells The Misfit that Jesus could help him if he would only pray for forgiveness. This is a deeply ingrained belief for her, as she has been raised reading the Bible and taking it for truth. It is implied that nothing in her life has given her reason to doubt the teachings of her Christian faith. To her, it is simple truth.

The Misfit has a much more complicated view of Jesus. He tells the grandmother, “If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can” (Paragraph 133). Essentially, he admits that if the Bible is fact, then the grandmother is right: Praying to Jesus would help. However, he is frustrated by the fact that there is no way to know if it is fact. He trusts only his own experiences and was not there to witness Jesus performing his miracles. Therefore, based on his experience being imprisoned for no reason he can understand, he rejects faith and instead lives for the pleasure in meanness.

Allegory

“A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is, in many ways, an allegory of a traditional Christian parable—which is itself an allegorical form. A parable is generally a simple story with prototypical characters who learn or demonstrate a particular lesson of morality. According to this definition, the story seems at the surface to be a parable. The characters all fall into traditional prototypes: Bailey is the breadwinner father with a no-nonsense personality, his wife is the submissive mother type, the children are both spoiled and selfish, and the grandmother is a Southern lady, while The Misfit is essentially “the bad guy.” The plot is likewise simplistic: The family goes on a car trip and has an accident.

However, unlike a parable, there is no clear-cut lesson to be learned or truth to be gleaned from the story, which can be read in dozens of different ways. Although morality is at the center of the story, there are no conclusions about what is right and why. In fact, the conclusion, in which the family is murdered and the grandmother is shot at what seems to be a moment of divine understanding—only serves to muddy the waters of meaning for the reader. A parable would end with the moral character triumphing over evil or the evil character being punished in some way.

This story ends with the “bad guy” character triumphing while the grandmother is shown to be a person of questionable morality. However, her morality is not so negative that her death seems to be a just punishment for her actions. Hers is a benignly immoral existence hiding behind morality, while The Misfit is clearly and consistently amoral. In this way, Flannery O’Connor essentially subverts the idea of the traditional allegory, especially the Christian allegory.