"A Good Man is Hard to Find"--Flannery O'Connor

This short story is based on a trip that a "typical" American family is about to make. The family consists of a grandmother, her son and her son's wife and three children. They all live in the same home and have decided to take a trip to Florida. From the beginning, the grandmother does not agree with the location that they have chosen, but she still sticks along with her son. They start out the trip perfectly fine and try to keep a good timing of all their events. Along the way the grandmother chats away about all her past adventures and seems to be super happy. The family then decided to stop at a local barbecue/ gas station for lunch. They keep their visit short and head on to their destination. Once they were on the road again, the grandmother tells the two older kids about a secret compartment in a home that she once knew about and causes the kids to go crazy of the excitement. All the commotion and crying of the kids forces the dad to agree to their demands; so he took the dirt road that lead to the mystery house. Once they were on their way to the mystery home, the grandmother's cat awakes and jumps onto Bailey, the son, and causes the car to flip over. Once they recover from the accident, they see a car off at a distance and the grandmother calls for help.

The car heads their way and makes it to them just in time, but the grandmother becomes uneasy about who she sees getting out of the car. There were three men in the car and they were all run away's. The grandmother confronts the criminals by saying that she knows who they are. The criminals seem to not even be faced by the old ladies comments and proceed to "help" the family. They take the family one by one to the woods and are shot to death, except the grandmother that is left alone to talk to the head criminal called Misfit. She begs for her life, but Misfit has no mercy and ends up shooting her as well.
The whole time, this story seemed very typical because of the mommy's boy and the wife that never spoke up. Also, the sad thing about it is that there really are families like the one described in today's society. The mother could have just kept to herself and maybe things could have been different. Also, the children were the biggest BRATS that I could imagine! They were disrespectful and didn't mind to themselves. The children were also a big cause of the whole murder scene because the pushed their father to his breaking point. The wife in the story could represent all the typical daughter-in-laws that would rather stay quite then to hear their husbands mother fuss at them for stupid reasons, but she too didn't even speak up to her children when they misbehaved. The whole family didn't have communication which ended with their lives.