When you know you are about to be killed, what should you do? Should you accept death with a gracious, “thank you” or should you beg and plead for your life? Similar questions arose during our class discussion of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Conner. After Bailey and one of his sons are killed, the grandmother and mother, waiting with fearful anticipation for their own deaths, are left to face The Misfit and his men. The mother, with the baby and her daughter, June, is politely asked by The Misfit, “Lady, would you and that little girl like to step off yonder with Bobby Lee and Hiram and join your husband.” Without seeing this sentence in context, it appears merely as an invitation for a “lady” to reunite with her husband. However, in actuality, her husband is dead and this “invitation” is not for a reunion, but for murder. Because of the polite language of The Misfit, the mother responds courteously by saying, “Yes, thank you.” While, indeed, out of context, this response seems bizarre, looking at it in the text, the mother’s answer was more or less articulated unconsciously. Accepting her fate but paralyzed with shock of the murder of her husband and son, she is only able to murmur a quiet and gracious answer. Unfortunately, this shock, or some other unexplained reason, prevents the mother from trying to save her children.
The second notable pre-murder reaction is the grandma’s. Because the reader will never know what was going on in the grandma’s mind, her actions, or lack thereof, appeared selfish. While she was pleading for her own life, not once did she try to convince the killers to let her son, daughter-in-law, or grandchildren survive. She could have been in shock, but observing her talkative manner and focus on her own survival, it seems like she was fairly calm, compared to the mother, and simply being selfish. And unlike the mothers’ immediate acceptance of death, the grandma is persistent in her begging. Since she first met The Misfit, she tries to convince him—and herself—that he is a “good man.” She continues that she knows, “he wouldn’t shoot a lady!” and then, trying to convince herself of this, says, “Pray! Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady.” Although this desperation and constant begging is not appealing; in the face of a murderer, it is certainly justifiable.
These interactions analyzed above demonstrate different characters’ reactions to death. In other words, a person’s actions and words when facing death largely depend on that person’s personality and the way in which the possibility of death confronts them. In the face of death, the grandmother does not act out of character—in the beginning of the story, she is begging to go to Tennessee and not Florida, despite the wishes of the rest of the family. In both situations she is acting selfishly through persistent begging, although in differing degrees.
What would you do in the face of death? What do you think you should do? Should you act honorably and politely or should you plead for your life? If my son and husband had just been shot, it might be easier to quietly agree to death. But I think (I hope) my inner instinct, even after such a tragedy, would urge me to resist (run fast or beg for my life)—if not for me, than for my kids. (575)
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Margaret, good post. You ask yourself a good question and use what you know of yourself and of human nature to try to answer it.
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