A Good Man Is Defintely Hard to Find, especailly in this story.

The story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor can be considered in the Southern Grotesque genera for many reasons. This story speaks a lot to the reader about the short coming of this family. In most families, children respect their parents. I've always assumed that the South was more civilized with their southern gentlemen and manors. But this in not the case with the character Bailey. He is rude to not only his mother, the woman who gave him life, but he's also distant and cold towards his wife and children. This is not a family I would have wanted to grow up in. Another good example of how this story is southern grotesque is the setting. As described, the setting of this type of story should be "decayed and or rural". Our setting fits perfectly. Traveling through Georgia, which the boy John Wesley describes as a "lousy state", the reader gets the picture that Georgia is nothing much, other than rolling farm lands and old plantations (contrary to John Wesley, I would actually love to see Georgia some day). This fits the rural setting perfectly, especially once the family makes the fatal turn on to the old abandoned dirt road. The reader starts to feel weary once they turn on to this road, and once the family gets into the car accident and we find out that they see a car coming, our intuition is proved right. 

The final reason why I believe that this short story is grotesque is one specific character: The Misfit. He is a secular grotesque character because as the grandmother pleads with him about Jesus, he simply doesn't care. The Misfit believes that no one can save him now. A grotesque character may posses an exaggerated personality trait or characteristic for the purpose of eliciting both empathy and disgust in the reader, which The Misfit does perfectly. As the reader, we are disgusted by him because he is a murderer. Once he tells Baily and John Wesley are told that they are to go with Bobby Lee, the reader assumes the worst. Once we hear the gun shots, we know what has happened. But we also feel bad for The Misfit. He grammar and speech suggests that he hasn't had much education, and when he tells the grandmother that he can't remember what he did to get locked up, the reader starts to feel pity for the man and his comrades. BOOM BOOM BOOM. Once those shots were made, we no longer feel pity for The Misfit.