Character analysis of the gran
Character analysis of the granThe grandmother is the central character in the story "A good man is hard to find," by Flannery O'Connor. The grandmother is a manipulative, deceitful, and self-serving woman who lives in the past.
She doesn't value her life as it is, but glorifies what it was like long ago when she saw life through rose-colored glasses. She is pre-
sented by O'Connor as being a prim and proper lady dressed in a suit, hat, and white cotton gloves. This woman will do whatever it takes to get what she wants and she doesn't let anyone else's feelings stand in her way. She trys to justify her demands by convincing herself and
her family that her way is not only the best way, but the only way.
The grandmother is determined to change her family's vacation destination as she tries to manipulate her son into going to Tennessee
instead of Florida. She began trying to make Bailey, her son, feel guilty about the children's safety. The grandmother says that "she
couldn't answer to her conscience if she took the children in a direction where there was a convict on the loose." She is not success-ful with Bailey, so she uses the same antics on her daughter-in-law who doesn't even acknowledge her. Before she has a chance to work on the children, they tell her "stay at home if you don't want to go." The grandmother then decides that she will have to go along after all, but she is already working on her own agenda.
The grandmother is very deceitful, and she manages to sneak the cat in the car with her even though she knows Bailey does not "like to arrive at a motel with a cat." She decides that she would like to visit an old plantation and begins her pursuit of convincing Bailey to agree to it. She describes the old house for the children adding mysterious details to pique their curiosity. "There was a secret panel in this house," she states craftily knowing it is a lie, and not really wanting to, but she is determined to see the house. The grandmother always stretches the truth as much as possible. She not only lies to her family, but to herself as well.
The grandmother doesn't live in the present, but in the past. She dresses in a suit to go on vacation in a very humid part of the country. She states, "in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady." She constantly tries to tell everyone what they should or should not do. She cautions Bailey "that the speed limit was fifty-five miles an hour and that the patrolmen hid themselves behind every billboard and small clumps of...
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