A good myn IS hart to find, Flannery

Courses without Borders  
 
Dear Fiction-ers,

A good man IS hard to find!
 
Can you consider the possibility that
the Good Man which is hard to find
is, in Flannery O’Conner’s story  the
serial killer that plugs Granny on a
grassy roadside, after she empathetically
reached out to him—touched for the
very first time by someone else’s
story and situation?
 
Oh, you’re just one of my children,
she exclaims – and touches him,
feeling his pain.
 
He's the Misfit (his pseudonym, fake name)
he calls himself because he’s never fit in,
damnit and he’s carried  a strong sense of
GUILT all his life for no reason he can
determine, so he starts killing folks in order
to give himself  a reason for feeling guilty.
 
How come I feel guilty when I’ve done
nothing wrong? Ok—well: I’ll do some
thing wrong and then I’ll have an
explanation.
 
Can you see the good sense in this?  Don’t we
want explanations? blamations?’ because & affects?
reasons why?      For our FEELINGS.
 
Granny. on the other hand: what a nuisance, annoying
old biddy. pain in the family ass. And she’s the one that
got them all killed.
 
BUT—and this is uncanny and counter-intuitive and you
probably won’t buy it or even consider . . .

(but we’re are dealing with an almost “medieval”  Catholic
outlook in Flannery—who claims  every story she writes
as within  it a “moment of GRACE”—not the hearts & flowers
”grace” but more like the “terrible swift sword” that precedes
the “hearts & flowers” grace—know what I mean?   Not
politically correct “grace”— something Else)
 
. . .as I was saying: the uncanny and counter-intuitive: Granny
reaching out to the MisFit has for that final moment “lost herself”
in a sense of ANOTHER, and so even though she gets plugged
in the chest right after by the Misfit (“she woulda been a good
woman if  it had been someone there to shoot her every
day of her life”) one can imagine her “saved” by  the experience—
no seriously: SAVED, RESCUED, DELIVERED from her
self--what we all want, yes?  No?

The final image of Granny,  like a child stretched out on the grass,
eyes  full blue and innocent…. "Delivered" -- no matter dead
the next moment.
 
And the MisFit is “the good man”: her messiah,  savior—so to speak.
 
NO?
You don’t like/buy that? 
Take it up with Flannery then. 
Of course you can’t—but I’ll be
glad to be her stand-in and try and
defend this other-worldly world view
called Catholism, called Christianity.

It don’t make common sense, that’s for sure.
A fiction, of course: what isn't?  Fiction mothers
fact and faction as well as fashion, true? Need
we argue?

Best, Sam