it, i.e., as something good for him. Granted this
             principle, one can see that the Misfit's murderous actions are
             committed under the delusion that somehow they will reap some
             good for him, and somehow answer to his need. But stealing the
             family's battered car, while important, is only the immediate goal
             of the Misfit; it is not the locus of his inner energy and desire.
             His conversation with the Grandmother reveals many things
             about his deeper desires, the most important of which is that the
             Misfit wants some rationale and justification for his spiritual
             predicament. he wants an understanding of what he sees as the
             disproportion between the personal suffering he feels afflicted
             with and the actions he has committed. As he tells the
             Grandmother: "I call myself The Misfit'. . . because I can't make
             what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in
             punishment."1 The Misfit feels the mystery of evil in his bones,
             and he finds it incomprehensible. While there are surely
             elements of self-pity and self-justification in his statement, his
             mental suffering, his sense of guilt, and his questioning cannot
             be ignored or dismissed, because it reflects a spiritual condition
             that is both fundamentally human and conspicuously modern in
             temper. Though he commits evil deeds, the Misfit is also a
             seeker who wants some answers to the mystery of evil he feels
             both in himself and witnesses in the world. His keen sense of
             evil suggests implicitly that he also has an appreciation of the
             good, however distorted or misguided it may be.
             The Misfit openly acknowledges his own evil. When the
             Grandmother tries to type him as a "good" man, i.e. a gentleman,
             he answers: "Nome, I ain't a good man . . . ," and then adds: "but
             I ain't the worst in the world neither" (148). he admits that
             "somewhere along the line" he has "done something wrong" and
             been sent to prison. Subsequently,...