Work: Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find
To say that this piece disturbed me would be an understatement, but I suppose, if I truly believe it when I say, “Making others uncomfortable is a good thing” (meaning, of course, helping someone move out of their comfort zone), then finding/having been assigned this story to read is a very good thing. It’s my first experience with O’Connor. I’ve enjoyed what little bit of William Faulkner that I’ve read, and I’ve heard her work compared to his. So, she was on my list. I just had not found my way around to her until now.
The dark humor—and it is humor, it is dark—caused almost a perverted sensation while I was reading, similar to watching a slasher movie and being unable to look away from the screen during the goriest parts (though I am getting much better at doing that – or changing the channel, or just not watching to begin with when I’m aware of the content).
I’m not quite sure if the grandmother is feigning ignorance of the fate of the rest of her family; I don’t know if it’s her manipulation, so deftly used in getting the car to make the turns she wanted it to make. The imagination could take it either way, and one turn would produce a very different conclusion than the other.
Ultimately, though, I find the most meaning in next to last utterance of The Misfit: “‘She would have been a good woman…if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.’” Is this an indication that she needed the desperation to bring out the best in her? What about the best in him? He didn’t seem to enjoy her killing. I can’t imagine him having a theological discussion with every life he’s taken, but I can imagine him having taken many lives.
Though he no doubt would have killed her regardless, perhaps it was her suggestion (statement) that there was good in him that brought him pause. Black and white, good and evil. Repulsion that Bobby Lee could suggest that killing was fun. Fun did not fit with his view of himself?
More later, till later...
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