No Grace
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No Grace
Readers often find "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor violent or graphic. Mostly this comes from of the grotesque ending of the story where the Grandmother declares, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" After saying this, "She reached out and touched [The Misfit] on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest" (O'Connor, "Good Man" 1391). Many arguments have been made regarding what the Misfit was trying to do and what the Grandmother did when she reached out and touched him. O'Connor said the Grandmother made "the right gesture" (O'Connor Mystery 1392). Stephen Bandy in his critique "One of My Babies: the Misfit and the Grandmother," takes a different view. "The Grandmother's role as grace-bringer is by now a received idea, largely because the author said it was so. But one must question the propriety of such tinkering with the character, after the fact" (Bandy 1400)...