Being self-centered and selfish often brings negativity to someone's life. This negativity brings experiences that are supposed to teach selfish people a lesson, and they are not always enjoyable experiences. Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard To Find uses the grandmother to portray the dangers that selfishness, manipulation, and arrogance can bring to oneself and the surrounding people. Her character's arrogance is evident in many ways as she tries to seem superior than her actions confirm her to be. Her selfishenss and foolishness make her unaware of the dangers into which she is drawing her family.
First, the reader can infer from the grandmother's character that she is simply a caring old woman, living with her son's family, who is unappreciated and ignored. At the beginning of the short story A Good Man Is Hard To Find, the first character introduced is the grandmother, thinking that she wanted to go to East Tennessee to visit old friends instead of Florida with her son, Bailey, his wife and children. Then, she starts trying to convince Bailey by telling him about a loose convict and showing him the newspaper which claimed that he was headed towards Florida. Her reason for not going to Florida was that she did not want to put her family at risk, declaring that "I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did." Even after saying that, her son did not look up, as if no one had spoken to him. The old lady then tried to persuade the mother by telling her how important it was for the children to "see different parts of the world and be broad," but she, like her husband, ignored her completely. The first few paragraphs of the story make the reader empathize towards the grandmother. Even though she is the one wanting to visit Tennessee, she cares about her family's safety and wants her grandchildren to become more cultured. When the grandmother tried to persuade her son and daughter in-law, they did not seem to care what she wanted or thought; she was ignored.
