Stephen Bandy’s “‘One of My Babies’: The Misfit and the Grandmother” provides insight into the intentions behind the Grandmother’s final action within Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. In the finale of O’Connor’s story, the Grandmother reaches out to the Misfit and murmurs “why, you’re one of my babies” (O’Connor 125) after the Misfit kills her entire family. This final action of the Grandmother can be jarring to the reader; thus, Stephen Bandy’s “‘One of My Babies’: The Misfit and the Grandmother” is helpful in understanding this shocking moment in the short story. Bandy argues that this final action is not out of the goodness of the Grandmother’s heart, nor an act of “the doctrines of grace and charity” (Bandy 107), but rather an attempt for the Grandmother to save her own life. The Grandmother’s character tends to be taken for only what lies on the surface, but her character runs deeper than these interpretations, to something darker than expected. Additionally, Bandy demonstrates to the reader that grace does not work, by the way of the catholic church, by simply extending grace to another, it is much more complicated; The Grandmother’s final action, more likely than not, is not one of grace. Bandy’s work allows one to see through the biases about the Grandmother’s nature that they may have, and properly evaluate the literature that they are presented with. Thus, Bandy’s article is extremely valuable to understanding the Grandmother’s final action.
The primary issue in the comprehension of the Grandmother, and her subsequent final action, is that readers come to varying views of the Grandmother. The general view of the Grandmother in O’Connor’s work is that she is like many of the older women in the lives of the readers: “weak, gentle, and benevolent” (Bandy 109). The Grandmother’s actions, including her racism, are briskly forgiven by some readers as from personal experience they know that “the old lady [lacks] comprehension, but that she [has] a good heart” (109). Thus, this leads to the Grandmother’s final action being out of the goodness of her heart, rather than out of selfishness. However, once the veil of bias that surrounds the grandmother is eradicated, as Bandy convincingly shows, the reader can more effectively evaluate the Grandmother’s final action.
The Grandmother’s actions are forgiven when one views her as an innocent, old woman simply lacking some cognitive faculties but, this proves a disservice to her character. Bandy argues that rather than the Grandmother’s final outreach to the Misfit being an action of her good heart, it is an action out of her own desire to survive. From the beginning of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” it is evident that the Grandmother’s intentions are not always out of the goodness of her own heart. The first action of deception that the reader is introduced to is when the Grandmother shows her son, Bailey, that the Misfit, a man “aloose from the Federal Pen” (O’Connor 112), is on his way to Florida for no reason other than to get Bailey to take the family on a trip to Tennessee instead. These “fruitless deceptions” (Bandy 113) of the Grandmother lead them straight to the Misfit as she lies to her family about the location of a house with a secret panel, likely out of partial selfishness as it finally allows for her to have attention; but the eventual crash, and the Grandmother identifying the Misfit, ultimately leads to the death of the family. Considering the Grandmother’s past with deception and “shameless pandering” (113) Bandy makes it clear that the Grandmother’s final action is nothing different than the prior actions of her life; it is simply an attempt to save her own life.
However, as Bandy demonstrates, the Grandmother may not view her actions as selfish considering that “her vanity is remarkable” (114). The Grandmother’s view of herself is veiled, although she speaks at length of the “decline of civility . . . she is . . . a woman with neither values nor morals” (114). The Grandmother’s final action is an attempt to claw at the Misfit’s heart in hope that he will let her live. She brings the conversation to a place of religion, hoping that the Misfit will pity her, stating that “Jesus would help” (O’Connor 123) the Misfit if he were to pray. However, this ignites a fuse within the Misfit that the Grandmother cannot damper. Thus, as Bandy strongly argues, the Grandmother’s final words, stating that the Misfit is “one of [her] babies” (O’Connor 125) is the woman’s final attempt to strike a chord within the Misfit and save her own life after all her other attempts failed. This helps clarify the character of the Grandmother to the reader, and helps one further build an understanding of the Grandmother’s final action. Bandy takes the Grandmother’s actions from throughout “A Good Man is Hard to Find” into consideration for the true nature of the Grandmother’s outreaching to the Misfit, creating a very convincing argument for the Grandmother’s action being out of her desire for survival.
The Grandmother in O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is viewed as “the Misfit’s Saviour” (Bandy 109) by many, including O’Connor herself. The Grandmother can be perceived as reaching out to the Misfit in a Christ-like gesture, declaring him to be one of her children, in her final action. Although the doctrine of grace causes “endless trouble in the historic theological debates of the church” (110), it is evident that the invoking of grace is inapplicable in the instance. Even if, as Bandy argues, it is applicable in the case of the Grandmother and the Misfit, grace does not work in this manner. The grace extends to the Misfit, but he refuses it, so the grace will never fulfil its action. In order to further enforce this point, Bandy states that there is “no ‘later on’ in fiction, we do not, and will not, see ‘created grace’ in the spirit of the Misfit” (110). This point is quite convincing, as it shows that there is no point in basing one’s view of the Grandmother’s final action on what could happen next, as it is speculation.
Although Bandy clarifies that the Grandmother’s final action cannot be one of grace, as Bandy argues, the religious aspect of this final action must be further considered. Leading up to the Grandmother’s final moment, she says “Jesus” in such a great quantity that “it sounded as if she might be cursing” (O’Connor 124). Bandy uses this to bring into view the fact that the Grandmother may not, in fact, be as religious as she claims to be, as “most Americans are fundamentally irreligious whatever creed they claim” (Bandy 111). This point becomes more so evident towards the end of the Grandmother’s conversation with the Misfit when she ponders that “maybe [Jesus] didn’t raise the dead” (O’Connor 125). This brings to question the grandmother’s nature once more: she is using her religion as a symbol of her status that she uses to raise herself above others. Which connects to, and further supports, Bandy’s argument that the Grandmother’s final action was out of selfishness. Bandy concludes this view by stating that “to describe the Grandmother as the vessel of divine grace . . . betrays her integrity as a character” (Bandy 112). This point made by Bandy is valuable to the comprehension of O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” as it brings up religious issues that many people choose to ignore, especially in the Southern United States, where O’Connor’s story is set.
Stephen Bandy’s “‘One of my Babies’: The Misfit and the Grandmother” provides insight into different views of the Grandmother’s final action, and also provides reasons for which the information that lies on the surface is not all that there is to the Grandmother’s character. Although Bandy’s article is quite biased towards the Grandmother’s final action being out of her own selfishness, Bandy analyses other possible interpretations of the Grandmother’s final action, rather than ignoring them altogether. Many readers find the final moments of this short-story harsh, but lack the understanding as to why the Grandmother’s outreach to the Misfit is vital to the story. But, with Bandy’s “‘One of My Babies’: The Misfit and the Grandmother”, this final action can be both evaluated and easily understood by the reader, making this a valuable resource for anyone studying “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor.