Using the internet, I was able to find others' analyses of Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Some of the analyses argued that O'Connor's repeated use of Christianity as a central theme in her works was an attempt to convert her readers, whom she assumed were godless. This enlightenment, or conversion, was supposed to occur after showing what happens when the false idols her characters hold dear crumble, and they are faced with reality (Mitchell).
An example of this, in "A Good Man is Hard to Find," involves the grandmother's strong, southern heritage. She dresses with the intention that anyone who finds her dead on the road will know she was a lady, and she is always telling stories of southern gentlemen courting her. Then, the Misfit, whom she "knows" is of quality, southern blood, shoots her and her family, despite her belief in southern hospitality. Grandma is a woman who believes in God, but is sidetracked. The fact that she is killed on an unimportant side-road, confirms that she has strayed from the right path (Sanders).
Nick Evans, an instructor of another E316 class, has a web sight that discusses this story. At this web site, some one-paragraph analyses suggest that O'Connor's plan was to show the dysfunctionalism of real life (Tobin). They also suggest that Grandma is a symbol for changes that need to be made in society, and that her death is the result of failure to make those changes (Smith).
Another interesting feature of this sight is an internet class discussion about the story. The discussion does not offer a lot of answers, but it does raise some interesting questions, such as: what is the significance of the family dying while trying to find a lost treasure, and what is the meaning of the final exchange between the Misfit and Grandmother? Most of the analyses said that the story simply depicted common, dysfunctional, American life, and that the final exchange between Grandma and the Misfit was just the ramblings of a frightened woman. This interpretation fits how O'Connor saw her own work. She refused to be classified as an "interleckchul," and hated that English survey classes took her stories as "literary specimens to be dissected." She claimed that when stories are broken down into small parts, understanding of the story as a whole is lost (Mitchell)
