Sympathy for the Devil?

Authors often seem to write experimental stories with the express purpose of stretching their ability to influence a reader’s opinion. An author make create a completely detestable character just to see if she can force the reader to feel compassion for that character because of the circumstances that the character is found in. In Flannery O’Connor’s short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, much of the first seventy percent of the story consists of extensive characterizations of the grandmother as a bigoted, self-absorbed, and self-centered old woman. O’Connor clearly does not attempt to sugar coat her depiction of the grandmother, and there is very little indication that the grandmother has any redeeming features. The grandmother’s lack of compassion is demonstrated through her anecdote about the black child who ate a watermelon marked with the initials E.A.T. The grandmother could not care less about the black people around her or those who she views to be beneath her in the social order, except when they can act as objects of amusement. The encounter with the Misfit is the scenario that O’Connor uses in an attempt to force the reader to feel some degree of compassion for the grandmother. Although the encounter with the Misfit escalates because of the grandmother’s loose tongue and foolishness, the reader is slowly shown hints that the grandmother is melting under the sudden convergence of many forces beyond her control. O’Connor first shows this subtly, through the grandmother’s tone of voice. “The grandmother shrieked…the grandmother almost screamed…the grandmother called out in a tragic voice.” The grandmother next shows her loss of control through her actions, “The grandmother reached up to adjust her hat brim…but it came off in her hand.” The reader is shown that the grandmother grasp on events, her grasp on her life, is falling apart as quickly as the hat. Suddenly, in several paragraphs, O’Connor has turned the grandmother from an object of disgust to one of pity. After forcing this transformation, the author is free to portray the grandmother in a slightly more sympathetic, although still selfish light, as the grandmother pleads for her life while the rest of her family is executed. With her control over the reader firmly established, O’Connor presents the reader with an interesting quandary in the final scene. Is the grandmother preaching to the Misfit to save herself, or is she genuinely interested in his soul?