ARGUMENTATION Research paper AND ANNOTATED BIBLOGRAPY

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John Smith

Professor Griffin

English 1302

01 April 2019

Summary of a Source

Desmond, John. “From ‘Flannery O’Conner’s Misfit and the Mystery of Evil.’” Arguing about

Literature: A Guide and Reader, edited by John Schilb and John Clifford, 2nd ed.,

Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2017, pp.1028-1030.

John Desmond wrote this article to help understand the actions of the Misfit in

O’Conner’s, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” He examines the climactic scene between the

Grandmother and the Misfit as she desperately tries to reach out to the Misfit in a last-ditch

effort to save her own life. His interpretation of the scene is that it shows, on full display,

the rejection of humanity in the Misfit. That he is so caught up in rejecting humanity and

common people, that Grandmother reaching out to him and accepting him is enough of a

threat of violence that it deserves to be met with violence. Desmond points out the more

obvious skeptical belief of readers, that the grandmother’s gesture was her trying to find a

way to live, rather than some revelation and act of grace. However, he uses Catholic

philosophy to downplay that argument and argues the latter. His claim of the Misfit being

some Lost Prophet just waiting to be set on the correct path is a reach, but the fact that the

Misfit is the self-created role of a frail and broken creature is not. If the grandmother’s final

words and actions were indeed an act of grace, then the rejection from the Misfit fits

Desmond’s claim that without the role of the Misfit, the character would be but an empty

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shell. Desmond writes that the Misfit is under delusion and simply requires spiritual

salvation to be set on the correct path.

John Desmond’s article is an inside look on the character of the Misfit from a

religious pint of view. This will help guide my paper by examining O’Conner’s story from

a different point of view of my own as I hold the skeptical view that the grandmother was

feebly trying to save her own skin. It will also help that Desmond’s view, that a serious

criminal such as the Misfit is simply a lost lamb that can be returned to the flock, can be

applied to other characters in fiction. Under religious teachings that John Desmond

references, no one is beyond salvation.