What I loved most about A Good Man Is Hard to Find is the eerie irony that lingers over the entire story. O’Connor’s prose is light, almost playful, but the weight of her ideas leaves you with an impact.
The grandmother is who I thought about the most. There’s something almost comical about the grandmother. The way she insists on dressing like a “lady” for a road trip, just in case she dies that day. The way she sees herself as the moral compass of the family while being selfish, manipulative, and stuck in the past. It’s the kind of irony that makes you chuckle... until it doesn’t anymore.
She talks about how people were better back then, how the world has lost its way. But she never stops to consider that maybe she’s part of the problem. She thinks virtue is something you wear, like her lace-trimmed dress and white gloves, rather than something you live. To her, being polite and well-mannered is the same as being good. It doesn’t matter what’s underneath, as long as it looks right on the surface.
Then, she meets the Misfit.
She tries to reason with him the way she does with everyone—by appealing to status, nostalgia, shared experience. She calls him a good man, though she doesn’t actually know him. She assumes that if she says the right things, aligns herself with him in the right way, he’ll spare her. As if words can hold back death. But words fail her.
And that’s when something shifts. When she reaches out to him, calls him her “baby,” it doesn’t feel calculated. It’s not another act of manipulation. It feels, for the first time, real. Like she’s looking at another human being and finally seeing him—not as a threat, not as a criminal, but as someone just as lost as she is.
This reminds me of the thief on the cross in the Bible. He spends his life as a criminal, but at the very end, he looks at Jesus and says, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” He isn’t bargaining. He isn’t making excuses. He just sees the truth, simple. And Jesus tells him, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
But here, there’s no salvation. The Misfit pulls the trigger, and that’s it.
No final redemption, no parting words, no grand resolution. Only silence follows.
It’s unsettling. We’re used to stories where a moment of clarity means something—where realization leads to transformation, where a final act of goodness can redeem a lifetime of blindness. But in O’Connor’s world, understanding comes with no guarantees. The story doesn’t bend toward grace.
I don’t know how I feel about that. I’ve always struggled with the idea of salvation. The thought that no matter what someone has done, they can be saved if they just believe. Growing up, that never sat right with me. I carried anger with me for a long time, resenting the idea that the people who had hurt me could be forgiven so easily, while I, who struggled with faith because of those very experiences, would supposedly be left behind. I felt angry.
But, time softens things. I’ve also done wrongs. I’ve regretted, often, thinking about things I wish I could take back. And if I want to be at peace with my own wrongs, I learned that I have to forgive others, too. Not because they deserve it, not because I owe them anything, but because I can’t live my life bound to that anger. Because if I believe in any kind of grace, I have to believe it’s for me too. I have to accept that maybe everyone can be saved, even if it comes too late.
And the more I think about it, the more I see myself in the grandmother. I can’t judge her without judging myself. I’ve clung to my own illusions, my own sense of righteousness. I’ve made mistakes and only realized their weight after it was too late to undo them. Maybe, like her, I’ve spent too much time believing I was right, only to be forced into humility by the moments that stripped me bare.
So, even if it’s too optimistic, I’d like to think that in those last moments, the grandmother really was saved.