I thought I was done with my serial on serial killers, but then I remembered that I still had not read A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Conner. It’s a short story, so easy to read (or listen to) in a single sitting, and I wanted the perspective. It is written by a woman in 1953, so one of the first female looks at the post-WWII serial killer.

I will start by saying that I had (of course) heard of Flannery O’Conner, but I hadn’t read any of her work and didn’t know anything about her. Apparently she’s one of the big names in the southern gothic tradition and she features morally flawed characters, the grotesque and critique of southern society. Like many writers of her time, she wrote with certain words and ideas of racism that would not be tolerated today, so if you’re going into her work, be aware of that. I first read the story, and then I listened to the Drabblecast audio version, which was very well done.

Spoilers Ahead

If you haven’t read the story, go read or listen to it. It’s a 45 minute podcast. To refresh your memory, the story is about a family living in Georgia who is going on vacation. The grandmother wants to go to her childhood home in Tennessee to visit old friends, but the father has decided to take the family, once again, to Florida. Trying to sway her son to her side, the grandmother shares a news story about the Misfit — a serial killer who has escaped from prison — who’s thought to be on the lose in Florida. But her pleas are not considered and the family heads to Florida.

Most of the story is the family’s chaotic and unpleasant car journey, including a stop at a roadside restaurant where the name of the story is explored by the grandmother dubbing the owner a “good man” and reminiscing with him that in the old days people were better. Halfway through the story, things take a turn for the worse when the grandmother deceitfully convinces the family to visit an old plantation she remembers. However, the plantation she remembers was actually in Tennessee, not Georgia. When she realizes her mistake, she disturbs the cat who leaps on the father and causes a car accident. The entire family is unharmed but the car has done a complete turn and is stuck in a gulch. Along comes the Misfit and his goons. The family expects the three men to help them, but instead the men want to steal the car. The three men slowly and methodically kill the family with no resistance as the grandmother chats with the Misfit about his crimes. She assures him he is a good man, as if she can speak it into a reality, until he shoots her, commenting that she was a good woman so long as someone held a gun to her head.

Dark? Yes. Cynical? Perhaps. Dryly witty? Absolutely. As writing of the period did, the story follows the rule of “know how complex it is but write it simply.” There is not one comment about how the characters feel or their internal dialogue. Everything is shown through their actions and speech. This leaves the story open to interpretation and makes it more dependent on the experiences of the reader to give emotional context to the story. This is something I miss from this period of shorts, and I want to try brining it into my own writing more, but I don’t know if it will be possible to strip the internal dialogue from my voice.

Post WWII Social Uncertainty

This story lines up nicely with The Killer Inside Me, which was published in 1952. It has similarities in the post-war social uncertainty, where people who lived before WWII dreamed of a better time before the war when social standards were higher and there was more trust. Throughout the story, the grandmother is nostalgic for her early years, which were obviously pre-war. You have her living in a chaotic family life that she doesn’t like and wishing she could go back to her home state of Tennessee. When the children are disrespectful to their home state, she reminds them that in her time children respected (and loved) their home state. At Red Sammy’s the family almost seems to pass through WWII — Red Sammy is a veteran, with the implication that his life is hard because he’s a veteran and that you should stop and visit his restaurant because he is a veteran. We see Red Sammy capitalizing off of the fact he is a veteran, so we have memories of the war and the change in society — from one more communal and trusting, to one that is driven by capitalism and a more selfish outlook.

After the family passes Red Sammy’s, they are dumped into a world of chaos — one where people no longer help when you break down on the side of the road, but instead shoot you. Reading the entire section with the Misfit, I felt a sense of inevitable dread mixed with horror. Why didn’t the family resist? Why didn’t they run away? Or at least try to stop the gang from killing them? But I feel like this captures the post-war feeling of inevitability. Bad things happen. You accept them and life goes on. Or sometimes it doesn’t. This chaos is the new normal after the war.

The Fall of the Family

There is no arguing that the family in A Good Man is Hard to Find is broken, showing the shift away from family values and to more egocentric individualism. What shocked me, though, was the difference in interpretation among readers of the story. When I read the story, I was sympathetic to the grandmother. To me, she seemed like an old woman from a past generation who was cast aside. Her son does not listen to her input and obviously resents having to care for her. Her daughter-in-law similarly acts like she doesn’t exist. Her grandchildren have picked up on this disrespect and taunt her. In her old age she lacks the self-determination she had in her youth. For me, it is this disrespect and frustration that leads to the fatal moment when she disturbs the cat by realizing her mistake regarding where the plantation should be.

But when I went online to look at other critiques I saw that other people interpreted the grandmother much differently. They found her annoying, obnoxious, and selfish. Many placed the blame for the accident solely on her shoulders, and they found nothing redeeming about her. I realized many of these critiques were high school and college students, so readers between the age of fifteen and twenty-two, and I wonder if that has something to do with the interpretation of the elderly as annoying and selfish rather than as the victim in this situation. Additionally, most of the critique came from the United States, a much more individualistic country than Bulgaria, where elder “care” is taken much more like a burden.

Either way you interpret the story, the decay of the family plays a role in their ultimate fate. If the family listened to the grandmother more, they would not have ended up in that ditch. If the father was more engaged with the children, the same might be true. And if the grandmother was not lying to the family to get her own way, they would still be alive. In that way, the serial killer is not the actual antagonist, but the crumbling of the American family. A family that does not talk, does not respect each other, and lives in a constant state of false politeness rather than real love and care.

It is interesting that the other family in the story — that of the Misfit — is described as the perfect family. The mother, father, and siblings are all described as good. From the few sentences they are mentioned, you get a feeling the Misfit’s family is the opposite of the story’s family. This is somewhat unique to me, because we don’t get this tragic childhood that made the killer. Instead, we get a solid, caring family. The Misfit was simply born evil. But it is important to note that “evilness” is described by the Misfit’s father as simply wanting to know how things work. The evil that kills society is questioning it.

Blindly Upholding Social Norms

Throughout the story, social norms are blindly followed. We first see this when the grandmother gets ready for the trip, dressing like a lady. She is determined that if there is an accident, whoever finds her body will know she was a lady. It is important to note that she does not demand the same action from her family — because her family has shown that they do not listen to her. So we have one character clinging to the old social norms and the next generation flouting them.

We see this nicety once again at Red Sammy’s. His wife asks June Star if she would come live with her, and June gives a horribly rude response. Instead of reprimanding the child, the woman simply smiles and takes it — to keep the peace and to keep her patrons happy. Then in the car, the son is kicking the father’s seat. Again, he simply takes this abuse. We have a generation that is avoiding conflict and keeping the outward social peace, while refusing to take action slowly erodes society.

This is then shown in the final scenes with the Misfit. Each family member walks willingly to their death rather than make a scene. Avoiding conflict is more important than trying to stay alive. At the same time, the grandmother is certain the Misfit will not kill her because she is dressed like a lady. Remember, her family was not dressed in style, so it is believable that she would accept that he would kill them and spare her simply for having lady-like clothing. She’s also trying to convince the Misfit that he’s a “good” man. Goodness, defined by the grandmother, is from good blood. It is determined by social standing. But the Misfit has clearly rejected social norms. It doesn’t matter if he comes from a “good” family or if the grandmother is dressed like a “lady.” These things can no longer protect you… and perhaps they never could.

Prison as an Origin Story and the Rise of Wilding

While the Misfit came from a “good” family, we still get a bit of an origin story. He was held in prison and came out worse than when he went in. Although we don’t know what he went in for, we do know he felt the punishment did not fit his crime. We know he compares the prison to a grave, and that it felt like death in there. In a way, he was the antichrist, died in prison and reborn as social chaos. I don’t know enough about the time or O’Conner to know if this was supposed to be a critique of the prison system, but it definitely works as one.

The Misfit is one of the first serial killers I read as a wilding killer. Although he has a reason for killing the family (to take their car and clothes and continue his escape), his actions line up more with a wilding killer — roaming the country to kill for the pleasure of it. At one point, he defines “goodness” as killing or burning down a house or doing whatever else you want. For him, “goodness” is pleasure, and pleasure is meanness. It is severe individualism in direct conflict with the concepts of society and the “goodness” of conformity. This implies that the Misfit is killing the family not because he has to, but out of meanness and a sense of wilding. We do not know if it is prison that made him wild or him being born with curiosity that, through the push for conformity, became cruelty. But we do know that he represents a future that no longer follows expectations. People can no longer be trusted and the new “good” is a good that will kill you. Lock your doors. Trust no one. There’s no turning back.

It amazes me that such a short story packs so much into it. I won’t talk about the themes of religion that are heavy in the story, as they’ve been discussed so many other places, and this is already getting as long as the story. But I will say it was a refreshing read. I really enjoyed the style of it and it has inspired me. I also love a piece that has been picked apart and assessed so much over the years. It drags out every potential hint of symbolism and really enriches the experience of reading it. I wish there was more critique available on the books I’m reading these days.

I feel like saying “that’s it” for this series is now a bit like “goodnight Wesley, I’ll probably kill you in the morning.” But for now, signing off. /

Title	Author	Gender of Author	Gender of Killer	Status	Year
The Killer Inside Me	Jim Thompson	man	man	read	1952
A Good Man Is Hard To Find	Flannery O’Connor	woman	man	read	1953
The Wasp Factory	Iain Banks	man	It’s complicated?	read	1984
Perfume	Patrick Suskind				1985
Zombie	Joyce Carol Oates	woman	man		1995
the sluts	dennis cooper				2004
Sharp Objects	Gillian Flynn	woman	woman (child)	read	2006
Heartsick	Chelsea Cain	woman	woman		2007
Child 44	Tom Rob Smith	man	man	read	2008
My Pet Serial Killer	Michael J. Seidlinger				2013
Bones and All	Camille DeAngelis	woman	various	read	2015
There’s Someone Inside Your House	Stephanie Perkins	woman	man (teen)	read	2017
My Sister the Serial Killer	Oyinkan Braithwaite	woman	woman	read	2018
A Certain Hunger	Chelsea G. Summers	woman	woman	read	2019
They Never Learn	Layne Fargo				2020
The Serial Killer’s Wife	Alice Hunter	woman	man	read	2021
My Men	Victoria Kielland				2021
So Beautiful and Elastic	Gary J. Shipley				2023
Butcher and Blackbird	Brynne Weaver	woman	various (mostly men)	read	2023
Kill for Love	Laura Picklesimer				2023
Maeve Fly	CJ Leede				2023
Crushing Snails	Emma E. Murray	woman	woman (teen)	read	2024
Love Letters to a Serial Killer	Tasha Coryell	woman	woman	read	2024
I Was a Teenage Slasher	Stephen Graham Jones				2024
Vanishing Daughters	Cynthia Pelayo				2025
Shoot Me In The Face On A Beautiful Day	Emma Murray	woman	man	read	2025