What is the significance of the title "A Good Man is Hard to Find"?

"A Good Man is Hard to Find" is a story which presents us with a strange morality - one where integrity is found in immoral people and where hypocrisy and moral corruption seem to be magnetically attached to 'outwardly good' people.

The author's interest in Christian morality undergirds this moral system but one does not have to read her work in religious terms in order to take something of real interset away from these stories.

Viewing the work as a commentary on discrepencies between an inner moral life and more outwardly social or interpersonal morality, readers can engage with the author's fistion and its irony fully and directly.

In "A Good Man is Hard to FInd", there are two kinds of people, morally speaking: Those who know they are bad people and those who are bad people yet who persist in believing they are good.

In the story, the grandmother makes the mistake of thinking that her own moral qualities are self-evident. She dons a 'pinned purple spray of cloth violets containing a sachet' so that 'in case of an accident, anyone seeing her would know that she was a lady.' Her larger moral sensibility is expressed here as superficial and unreflective assertion, not as fact born out by action.She says that she is a good person, she commiserates with others about fallen state of the world, yet she does not do good things.

The grandmother fails to challenge herself to ever ask if what she is doing is right or good or reckless. Instead, she rationalizes bad behavour. Not once does she apologize or admit to her flaws. In short, she is a person of no moral integrity. The values she espouses are not the source of her behaviour.

At least this is true until she meets The Misfit, a serial killer, who is presented as the sole figure in possesion of some integrity. This is a facinating twist. The famous criminal who cannot remember his original crime is the only person who admits to his actual moral standing and lives honestly with it. His honesty does not make him a good person - he is a serial murderer after all - but it sets him apart from people like the grandmother in some interesting ways.

The Misfit is capable of bringing out the grandmother's humanity. Where she was judgmental and manipulative with her family, leading them through her own petty deceptions into the arms of a murderer, she becomes openly affectioante with The Misfit, offering him the kind of emotional solace which she never offers to her own son. It seems, The Misfit has the power to save the grandmother. The author O'Connor referred to The Misfit as a 'prophet freak.'

The 'prophet freaks' seem to carry an invisible burden and to fix us with eyes which remind us that we all bear some heavy responsibility whose nature we have forgotten. They see what we do not. They are prophetic figures, the result of outrage and not of geniality.'

The Misfit reminds the grandmother of her burden and she rises to the occasion but this change serves to highlight two things: she has not been acting according to her 'heavy responsibility' up to this point in her life and The Misfit is the figure who, in the moment of crisis, appears to act according to his priciples without wavering, refusing to say that he is a good person.

The grandmother attempts to soften The Misfit. She says that he is 'good man' and insists that he is 'not a bit common.' But, The Misfit refuses to compromise his moral vision and replies, 'No, I ain't a good man.' This moment is a stark contrast to Red Sammy's immediate agreement with the grandmother when she says that he is a good man, despite his unfeeling behaviour and his bitter inability to act charitably. Red Sammy, like the grandmother, allows himself to believe that he is a good person, a morally upstanding person but this belief is itself a moral failure in the context of the story.

Only the rigour of scrupulous and honest self-reflection can produce true integrity in an individual in Flannery O'Connor's world. However, this honest self-assessment does not automatically make a person 'good.' Hence, we are presented with a moral system where we have two kinds of bad people and no good people.

It is a fallen world, just like the grandmother says it is. But, she is wrong to think that she and Red Sammy are exceptions. Rather, they are the example of a social mentality which accepts lip-service as a replacement for values, speech in place of action. Those who step outside of society's boundaries - like The Misfit - attain a sense of 'invisible burden' which is placed on them. They grapple with it. Their struggle may not lead them to glory but it puts them in a category of their own, set apart from hypocrisies and starkly aware of their own failings.