A Good Man is Hard to Find

1. A Good Man is Hard to Find is a short story about a family who goes on a trip, but has an accident and are killed by some men who stopped to ‘help’ them with their car.

2. Leveled Questions
Level One
What is the name of the grandmother’s son?
Level Two
Surprisingly, the grandmother did not react panicky or scared when she found out the man was ‘The Misfit’. Why do you think she did not act like this?
Level Three
Regretful seems to be a common characteristic among the characters in the short story. Talk about a time in which you regretting something and then some tragedy came out as the ending result.

3. Observation;
The theme of this short story is that there may be fatal consequences of being a self- centered person and trying to make people they way to want them to be. I believe the grandmother was much of a self-centered individual and she tried to make The Misfit a better man than he really was. The grandmother wanted to find out all the good things of The Misfit and allow him to understand he was a good man and because of this, her and her family ended up dead. The Misfit was not this man that she talked him up to be because him and his men ended up killing the family.

The common pattern in this short story was many of the characters having the characteristic of regret. This included the grandmother, Bailey, the kids' mother, and The Misfit. The grandmother regretted (or should have regretted) not telling the family that the house was really in Tennessee. Bailey, the grandmother’s son regretted bringing his mother with them on the trip, while the childrens' mother wishes she could change her childrens' behavior. Lastly, The Misfit regrets not being able to remember his past.

I thought this story was pretty interesting. Once I started reading it, I did not put it down because I was so curious to find out what was going to happen next. I found it pretty ironic that they ran into The Misfit after they just talked about him before the left for the trip and even when they stopped at Red Sammy’s Famous Barbecue. Red Sammy told them a good man is hard to find and it obviously did not stick with the grandmother because she was trying to get all the good stuff out of The Misfit and have it outweigh all his negative capabilities.