A Good Man is Hard to Find
by Flannery O’Connor
Flannery O’Connor 1925-1964
From: Flannery O’Connor: Collected Works the Library of America (c) 1953, 1954
THE GRANDMOTHER didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her
connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind.
Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the
table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. “Now look here, Bailey,” she said, “see
here, read this,” and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper
at his bald head. “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen
and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it.
I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t
answer to my conscience if I did.”