1. In the short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, the characters portrayal gives the grandmother a special quality. Bailey, the grandmother’s son, is a hardnosed man that seems to be gripey and annoyed with his self centered mother at most times. He makes the grandmother seem needy and pesters him. For example when the grandmother asks him to make a pit stop at the house, “Bailey looks straight ahead. His jaw bone was as rigid as a horseshoe. “No,” he said.” (par.49) Both of the children, John Wesley and June Star, are obnoxious rowdy children that seem to not know respect or manners in any case. The way June Star refers to Red Sammy’s as a “broken down place” and is rude to Sammy’s wife, is just an example. (par. 31) I think that all of the characters help show how self centered and manipulative the grandmother really is. While getting dressed, the grandmother gets dressed to the hilt so if there were an accident, “anyone seeing her on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” (par. 12) The Misfit is a mean and ruthless convict that will take anything into his own hands. The way he interacts with the grandmother makes me think that she is even more selfish. The grandmother pleads for her own safety and her life as the rest of the family is killed. All of the family and the Misfit help paint the picture of the grandmother’s character in their own way. Overall, I think that the grandmother is a selfish, self-centered woman.
2. In the story, I think that the way the reader has perceived the grandmother could go down the path of sympathetic or evil. I personally would not be as apt to think the grandmother was sympathetic however. The grandma did ultimately choose to lead her family down the path that put them in the predicament that they found themselves in, and then lied to the family about the secret panel in the house. (par. 45) That encouraged the children to talk Bailey into going down the beaten