Agent of Grace in Flannery O'connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Introduction

Flannery O’Connor is quite well known for her usage of the “agent of grace” archetype. This character, who is not necessarily a good person, is used to gift divine mercy onto the main character who, up until that point, had been blind (sometimes with glasses) to something in life. In O’Connor’s short story A Good Man is Hard to Find, the character of the Misfit serves as an agent of grace to the grandmother, and she indeed truly receives grace from the Misfit. Many critics do not believe that the Misfit, a known serial killer, could be such an agent of grace.

The Misfit as a Christ Figure

However, upon digging deeper, one will find that even down to his name, he is very Christlike. Jesus himself was a misfit, unable to truly fit in, and was constantly persecuted until he was crucified. O’Connor is clearly using a direct opposite of Christ to show redemption and grace coming from even the most unlikely of people. Not a soul in Jerusalem during the times of Jesus would have predicted that grace would come from a nobody who is the son of a carpenter. In addition, the Misfit does what Christ himself did, which is to show people what they truly appear to be, and that is why the Grandmother gets grace. Jesus, in all of the biblical stories, is known for metaphorically holding a mirror to people and allowing them to see themselves the way God does, and it is in this way that grace happens.

The Moment of Grace

Numerous times the grandmother fails in her faith and even agrees that “maybe he didn't raise the dead” (O’Connor, 1953, p. 12); however, when she finally touches the Misfit, who is a Christ figure, she is able to see herself as she is and gain grace. This moment is very similar to the story of Jesus and the bleeding woman, and O’Connor is using this parallel and her Catholic background to show that grace is given even in a split second to the grandmother. In this Bible story, Jesus is approached by a woman who has been living a life of sin and is bleeding quite terribly. As Jesus walks through the crowds, the woman “reached out and touched him” (O’Connor, 1953, p. 12), and Jesus, upon being touched, “sprang back as if a snake had bitten him” (O’Connor, 1953, p. 12) and gave this woman divine grace. It is in this manner that, just like the bleeding woman, the old woman receives grace.

Critics and Cheap Grace

Some literary critics believe that this supposed grace is just “cheap grace,” an idea from theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and that the grandmother “seems to be merely worthy of cheap grace” (Fox, 2002, p. 11). At other points, critics believe that since “her head only clears for an ‘instant’” (Fox, 2002, p. 10) and that it “is simply not enough time to undergo a complete spiritual transformation” (Fox, 2002, p. 10). Both of these assumptions, however much merit may appear to them, are completely false. The argument that the grandmother receives only cheap grace is ludicrous because many in the Bible who have become saints have received grace in a similar manner, and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer himself states in his book Nachfolge (Discipleship) that costly grace “is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him” (Bonhoeffer, 1959). This is exactly what happens with the grandmother because during her moment of epiphany, as short as it is, she is shown how she truly is by the Misfit and submits to Christ.

Conclusion

Now to the second argument, that it is impossible for grace to take place within such a constraint of time, which is also ludicrous. In the Bible, there are many instances of terrible people, suffering people who touched Jesus and were instantly changed and healed. Paul, the famed apostle, was a Christian hunter himself and was blinded instantaneously by the light of God and was given costly grace, very similar to the grandmother, as was Zacchaeus, the bleeding woman, and a host of crippled people. The bottom line of this story is not that grace is unattainable, but that grace is given to all who give themselves to the Lord and realize they need him in their lives, which by the end of the story the grandmother does. She achieves this final grace in the moments of desperation of her last bit of life just before her death. This indicates that O’Connor’s usage of a typical Christ figure is apparent in this short story just like her others.

References

Bonhoeffer, D. (1959). Nachfolge. SCM Press.

Fox, R. (2002). On the Nature of Grace: Flannery O’Connor’s Challenges to the Church. Journal of Religion and Literature, 34(3), 9-13.

O’Connor, F. (1953). A Good Man is Hard to Find. In The Complete Stories. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.