An Assessment of the Grandmother from “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

by Flannery O’Connor

The grandmother who remains unnamed all throughout in the story is the protagonist and the central character of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is hard to Find, a tragic story of a family who decided to go on vacation but got killed randomly on the road by a criminal on the loose named “The Misfit”. She is endowed with a joyful spirit, a passion in life in spite of her age. She is a non-stereotypical woman whose old fashion clothing and beliefs contradict her strong, manipulative mind, an opposite trait of a passive and complacent woman in her time. The Grandmother is a smart woman who knows how to assert herself by trying to use all the
Another indication of the grandmother’s unique personality is her clothing and style. The author presents her to us as being a prim and proper lady dressed in a navy blue suit with a matching navy blue sailor hat and white cotton gloves. What makes her clothing and style peculiar and interesting is its inappropriateness to the humid condition of her surroundings. The grandmother seems unmindful about it instead she focuses on her aristocratic and old-fashion views in life. She states, “In case of accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady” (357). Instead of viewing the grandmother as hypocrite and superficial, we could look at her as a lost spirit in a lost time frame and space. Her old-fashioned clothing, ways and thinking indicate her imprisonment and nostalgia for the old days. This is shown through her constant recalling of the past, her yearning to reconnect with her old friends in Tennessee, and her nostalgia with the old house in the hill. These are important indications of a suppressed spirit trapped in the pain and joys of unresolved past. Tragically, this constant yearning of the past will take her and her family to doom and death. Compared to the other characters in the story, the grandmother’s character is the most dynamic and vibrant just like how her choice of