Grandmother The Misfit

I believe The Misfit took his religion serious but he was confused. The grandmother never took her religious faith seriously. Her final gesture is a genuine moment of grace. Once again she is trying to be manipulative, but The Misfit is one who she cannot manipulate, or is she?

John Wesley, Bailey's son, asks the grandmother, "If you don't want to go to Florida, why dontcha stay at home?" (320). June Star replies that "She wouldn't stay home to be queen for a day," and goes on to say, "She wouldn't stay at home for a million bucks. Afraid she'd miss something. She has to go everywhere we go" (320). Even though these statements from the children to their grandmother are disrespectful, they do describe her character, as she "was the first one in the car..." the following morning (320).

I’ll give you all the money I’ve got!” (O’Connor 355). She is pleading the Misfit for her life only by saying the word lady repeatedly and offering him the money. She is also praising the Misfit by calling him a good man and trying to save her life. She was also careless about her family. When her family is taken down into the woods, she continues to talk to Misfit. She ignores the sound of when her son and rest of the family were being shot. She is apparently oblivious to many things. She was ignoring everything but the Misfit. “The shirt came flying at him and landed on his shoulders and he put it on. The grandmother couldn’t name what the shirt reminded her of” (O’Connor 354). The grandmother doesn’t even realize that shirt was her son Baileys. She had no interest in knowing where that shirt came from and what happened to my family. For the concern of her life only, she tries to persuade the Misfit the same way she tried with her family. “I know you’re a good man. You don’t look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!” (O’Connor 352). She is trying to manipulate the Misfit and hopes that he will bear her. She is thinking about no one else but the sake for herself. However she fails once again to influence the Misfit.

Blinded by her actions with her beliefs, she forgets the fact that faith without actions is dead. It is by this relentless character that causes her whole family to be murdered in the end.

The family originally intends to travel to Florida for their vacation, but Bailey reluctantly changes the location to Tennessee because the grandma feels that the children could use a change in scenery. Oddly enough, in the same conversation, the grandma reads a newspaper article that informs the family that a man who, “calls himself The Misfit is aloose…and headed towards Florida,” and she explicitly states that she would never “take [her] children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it” (1). The fact that the family is traveling to the same area as The Misfit hints at their encounter in the end of the story.

The grandmother changes her attitude towards Misfit as if he was a son. She treats him nicely and even offers her own son’s belongings for Misfit to use, “Maybe Bailey has an extra shirt in his suitcase” (478). She also tried speaking to Misfit about God and prayer, “Do you ever pray?” (479). She has a long conversation with him to buy time and think about how to get out of the situation she brought upon herself and her family.

With the shock of coming face-to-face with death, she starts to let go of her power-hungry and deceptive behavior and decides to act out of love and humility. Her head has become clear, and more than ever she becomes aware of the situation. All her shallow and hypocritical thoughts seemed to have dissipated, and she sees the Misfit as a child of God just. The grandma notices a voice crack in the Misfit’s voice and thought he was about to cry; she murmurs, “Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children” (O’Connor 458-459)! The grandmother calls the Misfit one of her kids despite the crimes he has already committed; God’s spirit may have entered the grandmother and is attempting to offer redemption to the Misfit since she has now accepted it. The still figure of the grandmother is described as “her legs crossed under her like a child’s and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky” (459). God has given the grandma salvation now, and her spirit has a journey to heaven via the cloudless sky. O’Connor shows the protagonist to be hypocritical, but the protagonist found salvation and appeared happy after accepting God and feeling love towards the Misfit; the Misfit appeared to reject God when he shot the grandmother in the chest after she was trying to lend him a hand. The grandmother was able to find salvation through the violence the Misfit brought.

She could not tell Bailey, though. However, as soon as this thought comes to her, "the newspaper top she had over the basket under it rose with a snarl and Pitty Sing, the cat, sprang onto Bailey's shoulder" (O'Connor 431) causing them to wreck and flip into a ditch. When they all get out of the car, they notice another vehicle slowly approaching them, as if to help. Immediately, the grandmother recognizes who one of the men is, The Misfit. The Misfit, after seeming to be pleased that the old lady could identify him, proclaims "but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me" (O'Connor).

Bailey is the grandmother's son. He does not listen to Bailey about the Misfit and Makes hasty decisions because of whining and griping. He was a driver for the family vacation or trip. In his mind, he's in charge, and he cannot let you forget it. I understand that he was highly addicted by drugs and cannot control himself, much less his family. He tries to keep the appearance of being in control but really isn't. Although it is his idea to go to Florida, it is unclear why he wants to go on a vacation at all. When the family has its unfortunate experience with the Bailey loses it. Even before he knows who Misfit is, the accident itself has already shows the effect of strain in his nerves. Bailey is the grandmother's

Initially when she encounters The Misfit, she reverts to her status to save her, “You wouldn’t shoot a lady would you?” but she quickly realizes that it holds no power and she resorts to her religious beliefs, encouraging love and patience and coaxing him to pray. She is calm and

Bailey: He loves his mom, but his mom’s selfishness gets to him, very now and then. When his mom starts manipulating him to go to the plantation he gives in because the grandmother already convinced the kids in wanting to go. Later on, with the hidden cat the grandma brought on the trip, the car jumps out onto Bailey's shoulder causing him to wreck the car and end up meeting the misfit (a murder). When the misfit gets close Bailey tries to quiet the grandmother, but nothing worked and so John Wesley and Bailey were the first to die. John Wesley is an eight-year-old boy.

She believes in their will so strongly that she is ready to “die for it….convicted of reverence”(128;68),not daring to “defy the holiest laws of heaven”(128;73). Perhaps this is why she is so beloved in the world of drama. That her faith and belief is so strong, she is no longer afraid of death, an attribute that haunts most characters of

She said to the Misfit, “Do you ever pray?”(1183). She mentioned this to him to see if he could probably change his mind and probably become a better person. This showed us that religion was really important to her. The Misfit responded to her saying, “nome” (1183). According to the Misfit, “I was a gospel singer for a while. I have been most everything. Been in the armed service, both land, and sea, at home and abroad, been twice married, been an undertaker, been with the railroads, plowed Mother Earth, been in a tornado, seen a man burnt alive oncet” (1183). He was trying to say he had a background in religious beliefs.Misfit told the grandmother he was never a bad boy but after he had done “something wrong” and got penitentiary he felt he got buried alive. The grandmother never showed fear towards the Misfit because she believed she could change him into a better

Surely, for the grandma effortlessness goes to her in her epiphany right now of her fierce passing. This is the reason the Misfit says, "She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." right now of her passing, she is recovered on the grounds that she at long last has enough lowliness to perceive that she, as well, is a heathen she is "there" with the Misfit and she surrenders her affecteness showed in the auto and at Red Sammy's, and along these lines gets

She tells her son to take a detour to view an old plantation she grew up on, the children would enjoy it. “She said the house had six white columns across the front and that there was an avenue of oaks leading up to it and two little wooden trellis arbors on either side in front where you sat down with your suitor after a stroll in the garden.” (O’Connor, 1983) Bailey gives in to his grandmothers manipulation once again as the grandmother convinces the children to join her. "