A Good Man Is Hard to Find: Grandmother

Grandmother Flannery O’Connor brought to life and portrayed the grandmother as a very manipulative, selfish and talkative old lady in the story “A Good Man Is Hard to find.” Grandmother presented herself as a proper little lady who lived in the past and believed her way to be the best way. Throughout the family trip, that she wasn’t warmly welcomed to attend, the Grandmother ran her mouth consistently and frustrated her son Bailey as well as his wife and eldest children, John Wesley and June Star, with whom she lived with. Grandmother’s persistence at being annoying and self- serving ultimately leads to the abrupt and brutal end of a family vacation that no one had planned.
In the beginning of the story, the Grandmother was already putting up a fuss over the location of the family trip. As an excuse, the Grandmother used the news reports of a criminal named The Misfit who was supposedly headed to Florida as leverage to sway Bailey, her only son, to change his mind. Grandmother tried her best to persuade Bailey into taking the family to Tennessee instead of Florida where she was convinced that there was danger and that the safety of the family was of far more importance than the possible fun they would have down there. “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,” (1) the grandmother had said to Bailey. However, the grandmother failed to mention to everyone that she was more interested in getting to east Tennessee to visit some of her connections and that indeed that was her motivation for attempting to make her son feel guilty for possibly endangering his family. Yet, when it became clear that she would not get her way with Bailey, the grandmother did not give up but instead turned to Bailey’s wife, who simply ignored her. Grandmother would eventually pack and be headed off to Florida with the family dressed in her suit, hat, and little white gloves, disregarding the warm