"A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Everything is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more."O'Connor, ''A Good Man is Hard to Find'' -- Jerz: EL150 (Intro to Literary Study)
Sure enough, the family runs into the Misfit, as foreshadowed from the very beginning. It almost seems that the Misfit really isn't all that bad at first. The Grandmother even tells him as much. She keeps saying that he is a good man. After some thought, he denies it. I think this can best be summed up by a quote from Batman Begins:
It is not who we are underneath, but what we do that defines us.
From the way he talks to the Grandmother, it really seems like he does not like who he has become. He simply just stumbled down the wrong path and kept on going. He even said at the end that he didn't like killing. In this sense, he is a good man deep down. His actions, however, are what define him as a bad man. On top of all of the other crimes he commited, he murdered the entire family...some directly, others indirectly. His actions are what keep him from being a good man. I guess this is why a good man is hard to find. It is easy to be good deep down, but to actually express this goodness through actions is, at times, harder to do
Comments (4)
Actions definately speak louder than words or thoughts! So I agree with you. He might not have been a bad person, yet his actions truly show that he is certainly not good.
Posted by Chera Pupi | January 31, 2007 9:11 PM
Posted on January 31, 2007 21:11
This is why he says that he's not a good man, but he's not the worst either. He may have appologized to the women for having his shirt off infront of them and helps the mother up, but he doesn't actually do any of these things himself. Bobby Lee gets him a shirt and Hiram helps the mother up.
Posted by MacKenzie Harbison | February 1, 2007 4:57 PM
Posted on February 1, 2007 16:57
Red Sammy's life is definitely in a downward spiral. I would agree with you that actions really make us who we are. We may appear or think we are something on the outside, but only when we act can people reflect. Sammy acted in such bad fashion that society viewed his as vile, rotten, and well, you get the point. :)
Posted by Corey Struss | February 1, 2007 8:23 PM
Posted on February 1, 2007 20:23
Correction, I was talking about the Misfit in my previous comment. Sorry, the Penguin game is quite distracting. ^^
Posted by Corey Struss | February 1, 2007 10:48 PM
Posted on February 1, 2007 22:48