Renatte Edgar
Ms. R. Nelson
08 August 2013
ENG 100
Manipulation
“The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennes- see and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind.” The grandmother, from A Good Man Is Hard To Find, is a manipulator. She does not want to go to Tennessee so she tries her best to change Bailey’s mind. Further evidence suggests that she is determined to do anything in her power to manipulate people so she can get what she wants:
“Now look here Bailey,” she said, “see here, read this,” and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did.” (O’Connor 1)
She never speaks about what she wants directly or confrontationally. What she says has ulterior motives; she tries to scare the children with reports of a criminal on the loose and uses her conscience as an excuse of not wanting the children to go to Florida. She mentions about the Misfit not out of genuine fear, but out of selfishness to gain what she wants. The grandmother uses ethical language to manipulate Bailey into changing his mind. When children show no sign of fear towards the