No Country for Good Men

From the very first sentence of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” we learn that the grandmother is a bit of an obstinate character. She initially refuses to go to Florida with her family, because she selfishly desires to travel to Tennessee instead. While she does cave in, the grandmother still seems to be a constant pest to the family despite all of her good intentions. However, I did not particularly care too much about the grandma and her relationship with all of the other characters. No, my interest lay in the symbolism of the grandma and her seemingly pointless conversation with the barkeeper.

The grandma seems to represent a passing generation, evident in how she dresses, how she talks, and what she says. For the trip, she is dressed like a lady in white gloves and a straw hat (12). She alone admires the mountains, and she recounts the memory of her and Mr. Edgar Atkins Teagarden. The tale exemplifies the grandmother’s somewhat outdated existence in the short story. All her mannerisms and characteristics are extremely old-fashioned, and her family does not heed her set of values and preferences, including being respectful and traveling to Tennessee. The granddaughter is a total smart aleck, and the rest of the family almost completely ignores her. The conversation between the grandma and Red Sammy expresses nostalgia for the time when there were nice people who were trustworthy and honest. Now, Sammy says, “a good man is hard to find” (44). I think this story also resonated with me because the discussion between the grandmother and Red Sammy very much applies this very era. “These days [we] don’t know who to trust,” as Sammy laments (35).

Grandmother’s symbolism again reveals itself, perhaps more strongly, in the scene when she is holding the baby in the car. The grandma plays with her grandson, making all sorts of silly noises and faces. In reply, the infant only gives “her a faraway smile” (22). The key word is faraway, suggesting that the baby is acknowledging this very visible past but is declining to be a part of it. He will embrace it tenderly, lovingly but will not accept it as his own.

This story, especially the ending, reminded me of the recent Coen brothers’ film No Country for Old Men. The plot of the film is fairly bleak, and, similar to the story, in the end, everyone dies. Both the movie and this story suggest that the “good times” have gone, and now there is more violence and other terrible nonsense going on in this “new time.” The scene in the bar clearly illustrates the dying era and the nostalgia expressed for it. The Misfit provides extra demonstration that the grandmother’s generation is past, destroying the last living remnants of it through her murder. Even though the Misfit is somewhat of a “gentleman” to the grandma, he clearly is not part of her generation regardless of his age, because he is spiritually disturbed and ends up shooting every member of the family. (510 words)