The Misfitt Incident

When the Misfit arrived with his gang, he gave a few hints to his victims indicating their brutal death. The Misfit arrived in a vehicle described as ."...a big black battered hearse-like automobile." The hearse, which is a vehicle carrying the dead, was the Misfit's vehicle which conveyed the message that he was going to kill the family. Another interesting imagery was when the grandmother asked the Misfit, "`What did you do to get sent to the penitentiary that first time?'" His answer further foreshadowed the death of the family. He said, "`Turn to the right, it

As they continue down and endless road the cat springs free from the hiding place in which the grandmother placed it, which causes Bailey to loose control and wreck. While sitting on the side of the road a car with 3 men pulled over one the grandmother stupidly introduces him to everyone as The Misfit. One by one each person is taken to the woods and shot while the grandmother tries to spare her life with The Misfit. Suddenly with the threat of death near her door she suddenly tries to be something she is not. She sympathizes with him and tries to relate to him. All of this comes to no avail if anything it antagonizes him which throws a switch in his mind and he reacts the only way he knows how, by shooting her in the chest and putting his problem to an end.

In this tale a family takes a vacation to Florida where a murderer who calls himself the Misfit, who was well designed by O’Connor to represent the grotesque qualities of humanity, has just escaped from prison. During a brief lunch break in which the grandmother and store owner, Red Sammy, lament the ills of society and reminisce about how much better life used to be and how no one is good anymore; while ironically, they themselves are not the best people. Later, after a misinformed wrong turn, the grandmother’s smuggled cat gets loose and causes a damaging wreck, this angers her son Bailey but he doesn’t confront her immediately, he needs to attend to his wife who has suffered a broken shoulder. After a few minutes the Misfit and his henchmen find them and get out of their vehicle, they look like they might be about to offer help but the grandmother recognizes the Misfit and makes it obvious.

She is slow to get out of the car for this reason. Inconsistent to her wish to be heavily injured during the wreck, the grandmother emerges from the wreck virtually unscathed. To the dismay of June Star the grandmother, or anyone else was not “killed”(432). The grandmother’s thoughts about potential injury and June Star’s disappointment with no one being killed foreshadows that someone is going to die. Ironically, the grandmother positively identifies The Misfit when he drives up. Now, The Misfit has to kill them in order to insure that they cannot live to speak of his actions, possessions and

The grandmother hid her cat in a basket, which she puts in the car with her on the day of the trip. The grandmother wears a floral hat and dress, because if she were to get into a car accident people would know she is “a lady”. The two kids June Star and John Wesley clearly dislike their grandmother, it is very clear because they often make remarks to suggest this. The family makes their way through Georgia and they Grandma reminisces about an old suitor she had back in the day when the family passes

From the time they all got in the car to the time they got out, all the grandmother did was talk. She was trying to talk her way to Tennessee and she talked her way into them detouring to go see some house that the grandmother

The long dusty dirt road ends up being the ill-fated end to all their lives thanks to the grandmother. A criminal that is on the loose happens along the dirt road. He has his cronies take each family member into the forest and kills them. The entire time this is happening, the grandmother is trying to talk to him out of killing them by being nice to him and trying to convince him that he is really a good man.

The story starts off with a family of 6 prepping for their trip to Florida. However, the Grandmother within the first couple of lines shows how against it she is because of the escaped convicts known as the misfits. The reader is told that the Misfit is an escaped convict that is known as a notorious killer and is somewhere in Florida. Looking at the Grandmothers character and reasons for bringing this up the externally makes the Grandmothers pleas seem reasonable and the thought process of the rest of her family to be less reasonable but when examined thoroughly and internally there is more fault to the Grandmothers character than is let on.

The story moves on and the road trip to Florida, not Tennessee as suggested by the grandmother, is underway. While the grandmother rejected the idea of going to Florida, she is the first person in the car to start the trip and makes a point to dress well in order to represent herself as a “lady” in case she happens to die in a traffic accident. While it might seem like the grandmother has finally agreed to the trip she is actively deceiving her family, she has smuggled her cat into the car for the trip, because she was fearful

She observes that the expression on his face was “close to her own,” as if “he were going to cry”; the good man in The Misfit came out for a second, and she acknowledges it. A sudden twist of events occurs after what would seem to be a moment which would cause The Misfit to reconsider his intentions; he recoils when the grandmother reaches out to him and proceeds to shoot her three times, killing her. This can

This family was messed up and it all started with the grandmas second husband. He was a child molester and because of that ruined the children’s life. Mentally, physical and emotionally he scared these children. For example, mentally Jim thought it would be okay to ask his half sister to move in and basically become his wife.

Tom comes by the house one day and sees their old car. Lucynell sees the man and wants him to fix things around the house and marry her daughter. They both use each

The irony of the story is that it is under the directions of the Grandmother that leads the family into a run in with The Misfit, which is what she told her son she would never do. Throughout the trip we are given examples of the racism that was present during this period. The Grandmother makes multiple racist innuendos such as her observation of the “cute little pickaninny,” and her statement that “little niggers in the country don’t have things like we do” (O’Conner 2). During the ride, The Grandmother convinces Bailey to take a detour down an old, dirt road which supposedly leads to an old southern plantation home she once visited. The road leads them deep into the woods where an accident is caused by The Grandmothers cat, which leaves the car upturned and the family stranded. It is then the family encounters The Misfit, whom discovers them stranded as he was passing by. He approaches the family with two young men and shortly after The Grandmother lets out a scream as she realizes him. During their encounter, the readers are given a small glimpse into the deranged mind of The Misfit. It is apparent that he has an upturned moral compass. He gains pleasure from committing crimes and the meanness that goes along with it. During his conversation with the Grandmother, he slowly has his men take members of the family out

However, this shared sinfulness is something The Misfit’s pride would never allow him to admit, so he murders the Grandmother with three fatal gunshots.

After the grandmother tries to convince The Misfit that he can be forgiven through prayer, he tells her that Jesus is the One who threw life off balance the most. This exemplifies the theme because The Misfit believes that Jesus threw life off balance when He rose from the dead. The Misfit said, “Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead…and He shouldn’t have done it. He shown everything off balance” (O’Connor 13). The Misfit considers Jesus rising from the dead wrong because he believes that once a person dies, that is the end of their life and their story. When Jesus rose from the dead, He continued his story even though it should have ended. This gives The Misfit reason to believe that Jesus threw life off balance. Later on in the story, The Misfit continues on to hold the family hostage, and he eventually kills them all. This relates to the theme because the family was murdered, and being killed by man rather than by nature threw their lives and the lives of those around them off balance. The reading states, “There was a pistol shot from the woods, followed closely by another. Then silence” (O’Connor 11). The family should not have died that day because their life track was to go on vacation to Florida, not to be murdered. By dying before they were supposed to, their lives got thrown off balance along with their family and