While I was reading A Good Man Is Hard To Find the question that come to my mind was why the grandmother does not have a name? The little girl June Star has a name, but the mother and the grandmother does not have a name. T
he grandmother plays a big rule in this story, she is the one who want the kids to see this house and she is the one who scared the cat when she realized she has directed Bailey to go the wrong way and causes the accident and got the whole family killed by the Misfit, but she does not have a name. O’Connor purposely not giving this major character a name because he believe a hypocrite and racist character like grandmother is common. It will be more significant to leave her unnamed and focus on the way this character would speak and dress.
The grandmother have the most dialogues in the story. O’Connor make sure the grandmother to express all her opinion to show the kind of shallow and mean person she is. “Little n___s in the country don’t have things like we do. If I could paint, I’d paint that picture.” the grandmother said when they pass by the shack with an African American child standing by it. She is surprise and pointing at the child like he is an animal at the zoo and using offensive word to describe him.
Before the family leave for their trip, O’Connor describe the grandmother’s attired very throughly ,”the grandmother had a navy blue straw sailor hat with a bunch of white violets on the brim and a navy blue dress with a small white dot in the print…in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady.” This is a very strange metaphor to use for describing someone who is dress very nice and this line also foreshadow what is coming for the grandmother. She is a very vivid character, but with no name, O’Connor wants his reader to have a clear picture in their mind of this character, her characteristic is more important, the title of the person is not important.
You make a good point on how the author chose not to give the grandma a name. I thought of the same question but instead my answer would have been that she wasn’t the heroine, until Flannery O’Connor state that she was. The readers are supposed to focus what the grandma symbolizes. And if she didn’t tell the story of the old house, the family wouldn’t have turned the car around and meet the Misfit.
I agree with Natalie when she mentioned that the author described how the grandmother attired herself carefully in case of an accident or anyone seeing her dead knowing that she was a lady. This beginning leaves a big foreshadowing because of how the grandmother dressed that foreshadows the death of herself and the family members. And because of her actions when she wanted to visit her town and then let bailey in a wrong direction made their way to those misfits. And all the family members ended up being dead. O’Connor brings a lot of foreshadowing in the beginning of the story and in the middle. Which all directed the story towards a very bloody ending.
I agree with Natalie I was looking forward to know the grandmothers name. The grandmother was the protagonist but at the same time she was not. She cared so much about her family but the feelings were not mutual. The majority of the time throughout the story the grandmother was disrespected either by her grandchildren,son and her sons wife. The family was not very considerate whenever she had an opinion or a say in something. The actions that the family demonstrated throughout the article that the family considered the grandmother to be a burden to them. On page 6 of ” A Good Man is hard to find” by Flannery O’ Connor it states ” i believe I have injured an organ, said the grandmother, pressing her side, but no one answered her”. After the family had gotten into a car accident nobody paid attention to the grandmother it seem as if it would have been easier for them if she just drop dead. The grandmother was the story the people criminal that killed her were the background