The Misfit
IT is not difficult to label the agent of evil in Flannery O'Connor's signature story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find." An escaped convict, self-named the Misfit, dispassionately orders the murder of a Georgia family - everyone from grandmother to baby - after coming upon them when their car overturns along a dusty country road. The Misfit orders the murders because the Grandmother has, foolishly, recognized and named him, and also to steal the family's car. But as in all of O'Connor's stories, the violent surface action only begins to suggest the depths and complexities of meaning embedded in the story. This is especially true when considering the mystery of evil and its On one level the story's title refers to the words of a popular song - "A good man is hard to find / You always get the other kind." But on another level it also suggests Christ's rebuke to Peter when Peter tried to call him good, and Jesus responded that no one should be called good (Mark 10:18) - a mistake the Grandmother makes repeatedly in her encounter with the Misfit. At the same time, it is also true to say that, excepting Satan, no one should be called totally evil, certainly not in any ab
he has heard the Gospel message, and it gnaws at his mind. But the Misfit cannot accept this cloud of unknowing. " But as Weil also remarks: "When there is a transference of evil, the evil is not diminished but increased in him from whom it proceeds. he also acknowledges that the punishment was "no mistake. We experience the equivalent of it in the form of resistance every time we set our faces in the direction of good. What initially strikes the reader about the scene is the enormous gap or lacuna between the grandmother's statement of doubt - "Maybe He didn't raise the dead . My focus here is on what this climactic scene suggests about the mysterious interpenetration of good and evil. On the one hand this disproportion confounds him. Still, the depth of his anguish must be given value. The Misfit rejects the communal world, just as his sense of "justice" is individualistic rather than communal. " (152)The Misfit is well aware of the demands of faith, just as he is aware that good actions in and of themselves are insufficient for salvation. For the Misfit, evil may, in the end, through the grace of charity, bring about his ultimate good.
Common topics in this essay:
Thomas Aquinas,
Gravity Grace,
Maybe Jesus,
Walker Percy,
Simone Weil's,
Grandmother Maybe,
Flannery O'Connor's,
Albert Camus3,
Moreover Misfit,
Simone Weil,
mystery evil,
pleasure meanness,
,
raise dead,
own children,
didn't raise dead,
grandmother's touch,
gravity grace,
pleasure life,
real pleasure,
didn't raise,
real pleasure life,
jesus raised dead,
love mystery intelligence,
head cleared instant,
|
Acceptance Essays
