Eating breakfast and reading the paper, a southern family is preparing to depart for their vacation to Florida. Set in northern Georgia in the mid 1950's, on a summer day (the children are at home, so it is a good possibility they are out of school for their summer break) when conflict begins to set in over the planned final destination of a vacation. The setting eventually progresses to a dirt road outside a town ironically named "Toomesboro". O'Connor begins to foreshadow the story's irony by having the grandmother attempt to the use the news story of the Misfit to support her argument to not go to Florida. She explains that he is in Florida and says "I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it." O'Connor has set the stage for the essence of the conflict in this story.
             This family is not typical. From the outside, they could be seen as an ordinarily happy family, but in contrast, they are rather dysfunctional. O'Connor provides the reader with a vivid description of the main characters, especially to the two women, the grandmother and the daughter-in-law. Their physical descriptions are given as polar opposites; the protagonist (the grandmother) is described as an unusually well dressed older woman that says she believes in the old-time Christian value system. She resents the changes in morality and blames them on the troubles of the world. There is little difference between the grandmother's past and the story's present. She can also be perceived to possess a condescending demeanor towards other races of people. She says, "Oh look at the cute little pickaninny...niggers in the country don't have things like we do... if I could paint, I'd paint that picture" the grandmother proclaims (referring to an African American child in front of a shack).
             The daughter-in-law is described as a painted as a simple southern mother...