Characteristics Of The Misfit People can be very misunderstood, especially literary characters in dramatic stories. In Flannery O'Conners "A Good Man Is Hard To Find", the Misfit is judged by the grandmothers point of view. At the beginning of the story she reads about the Misfit and compiles her own data on his lifestyle, and says "I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. That is basically saying that he is an evil man that she would not want to be close to, so all ready she has given him a bad rap. She has placed the Misfit in the role of a man who is a criminal who does not like to be messed with, and a rough, rugged, scary looking guy. He has been misunderstood throughout the story because of his past history of being a criminal. His traits are different then described, but he does have some likeness to what the grandmother pictures.
Matti
English: A photograph of a 2 month old human infan...
English: A Grandmother with her new born Granddaug...The grandmother describes him as a rough rugged man who is very mean. He is also described as a person who is not well dressed and very dirty and scruffy looking. When she encounters the Misfit she is surprised at how wrong she was. The Misfit is a very well dressed man who looks very clean and innocent, according to the grandmother. He would not be mistaken for a criminal. This surprises the grandmother, because he not only is very innocent looking but he is acting very intelligently. He presents himself in a very polite manner, and his facial expressions and his clothing speak very highly of himself. He acts very polite under the circumstances, which is out in the middle of nowhere. The atmosphere shows how calm and collected he can be which shows no sign of a lunatic from prison. So what the grandmother read at the beginning of the story about the misfit had given a false interpretation of him.
Behavior is also a major characteristic of the Misfit. The grandmother thinks of the Misfit of being an out of control lunatic. When the grandmother first realizes who the Misfit is she starts to cry as to believe that she is in trouble, and then she says "You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" So right away she thinks that the Misfit is going to kill them. As they are meeting the Misfit they soon realize what kind of person he is. He is a very calm individual who does not seem like the criminal type. He blends in well with the other characters, and, until the end, he does not get violent with any of the other characters. Even when he is giving orders he is very well organized and does not panic in any way. He does not seem hostile to the grandmother or to his henchmen. You can tell that he has done this before, because of how calm he is. Since he has the gun, and the family knows that he will use it if he has to, the follow his every command. The Misfit stirs up the plot a little bit, because he is an escaped criminal who is presenting himself in a very polite manner. Since he is acting so calm and sensitive the plot gets all mixed up and relies on his next move. His behavior turns out to be a big turn of events according to the remainder of the plot.
The Misfit expresses his style to reveal his true character. The Misfit is a very round individual in the sense that he is very complex. He acted so gentile toward the grandmother having peaceful conversation with her, while he took the other family members in the woods and killed them. When the grandmother started to pray for her forgiveness, she sayed "I know your a good man", "I know you must have come from nice poeple!", and that is when they went in to there deep conversation. The Misfit soon replied with "finest people in the world". Soon he went into great detail about his mother and what a great women she was, and his father who had never had a problem with the authorities. That is when she had almost started to believe that he was truely a nice man, and she got to close to him trying to comfort him. He jolted back and his true colors showed as he shot the grandmother three times in the chest. He showed no compassion for what they had discussed earlier so the monster had finally come out. The Misfit is a great view on life, because he is showing that life may not always seem what it presents itself to be. Also, life can change its ways at any given moment without any thought of what the consequences might be.
It is revealed to us that the Misfit was not a very compassionate man and he had no feeling for what he had done and what he was about to do. In all actuality the grandmothers perception on the Misfit was not totally wrong. She might have gotten the trivial things wrong like the way that he dressed or how he presented himself to other people. But she did get one thing right, and that was his criminal tactics. She said that he was a cold hearted killer and he proved that theory by having his buddies kill the rest of the family, and him shooting the grandmother. At the end of the story he stated to his fellow henchmen that "She would of been a good woman", "if it had been some body there to shoot her every minute of her life". He was clearly saying that the grandmother talked to much, and that maybe he was just toying around with her emotions before he killed her. The Misfit was the biggest and most important character in this story. He provides the audience with almost two different characters. The first was the calm, gentle, well dress gentlemen that first greeted the family, and at first he seemed to show them no harm. But as the story went on his true side came out and he became the cold hearted killer that everyone expected.
Grandmother
English: Proud Moment with Grandmother, Family and...
Grandmother carrying child in Borana