A Good Man? Try a Good Pair of Jeans.

The larger portion of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” showcases a day-to-day snapshot of a rather annoying family (Bailey, the children, the wife, and the grandmother), exploring just how manipulative and secretive the grandmother can be to get her way. Most of the story is peopled with these unlikeable, rather one-dimensional characters – that is, until the disconcerting and troubled Misfit saunters in and brings the action to a close. In the same way, religion does not seem to play a large role in the majority of the story until the very (upsetting) end. However, it is this discussion of religion that occurs between the bewildered and in shock grandmother as she argues for her life and the skewed, irrational logic of the Misfit that I wished to explore further.
The Misfit seems to have at least a rudimentary knowledge of liturgy, in keeping with his strange appearance as a bespectacled, scholarly killer. He reveals his unhealthy and distorted state of mind when he lays out his black-and-white thinking: he claims that either the stories of Jesus are true, in which case one should devote one’s entire life to him, or the stories are completely not true. Although the reasoning thus far does not seem out of the ordinary, it is the next conclusion that the Misfit draws that illustrates so clearly how sick he is: he says, “it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody” (135). He becomes more and more agitated, striking the ground and letting his voice spiral higher with his emotions. The grandmother, destroyed by the off-screen death of her entire family, is so muddled that she does not even know anymore what she thinks. Finally, the grandmother and the Misfit’s tortured conversation comes to a close as she is finally pushed over the edge and sees the Misfit in a whole new light. In a gesture reminiscent of a forgiving God reaching towards Adam with a divine touch on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, she reaches towards the Misfit. Calling him “one of [her] babies…one of [her] own children!” she touches him on the shoulder, trying to forge a bridge of humanity and last hope between her and the tortured madman (137). Just as many in the Christian faith believe in the laying on of hands as a path to health, the grandmother attempts to save the man she finally recognizes as a lost soul, not just an evil madman. The Misfit, however, cannot bear to be faced with this reaching out; he reacts as if instead of making a very human and almost divine act, the grandmother had been a “snake” trying to harm him – he shoots her dead and attempts to carry on his life with as it nothing had changed (137).
The Misfit’s skewed view of the world makes up some of the most confusing paragraphs of the story; while the earlier parts of the family’s journey had been narrated by plot, this section seems to be a sickening whirlwind of rather one-sided dialogue and illogical rhetoric. However, these portions are an important insight into the Misfit, the most significant character (besides the grandmother) in the whole story. While the discussion of religion draws out the deaths of the family and the sickness of the Misfit into a wider significance (Is there a meaning beyond the ugly reality of death? Is the Misfit all evil or just misunderstood?), it also serves to make the reader feel uncomfortable and wanting to cringe away. That final moment, when the grandmother becomes something more, is one of the most significant of the story. There is something dirty about the way the Misfit talks about Jesus, and it is this inherent wrongness that leaves the reader with a lasting impression after the story has been finished with no good man to be found.
(652)