The Grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" was a very interesting character whom I found myself liking very much. I found her to be very stereotypical of a southern grandmother. In fact, she reminded of my own grandmother! While she could come across as controlling or manipulative, I found her to be a good lady with quite a bit of style and a flare for conversation.
When we enter the story, we are faced with the Grandmother arguing with her son, Bailey, about the family trip. "The Grandmother didn't want to go to Florida." As her point of argument, the Grandmother was pointing out the fact that an escaped convict who calls himself the Misfit has escaped from the Federal Pen and is heading to Florida. She argued that her conscious could never allow her to take her family in the direction of criminal of that kind. However, it seems that the Grandmother was really only saying this to try to get the family to go to Tennessee, instead, to visit some of her friends. Although at first it seems her family is simply treating her rudely by paying her no mind, I believe they were really just used to this kind of thing from the Grandmother. The Grandmother must not have been too concerned with the criminal on the loose, because she was the first in the car and ready to go the next morning. I found this all to be very cute in a comical sort of way.
Once in the car, the grandmother continued to amuse me. Going against her son Bailey's wishes, she smuggled her cat, Pitty Sing, along for the trip. She was afraid that he might "miss her too much and she was afraid he might brush against one of the gas burners and accidentally asphyxiate himself." This point shows how, much like other grandmother's, the grandmother was a worrier in an almost silly sort of way. Most of us would never imagine our cats brushing a gas burner and suffocating in three days time, but the grandmother did, much like I could very well imagine my grandmother doing the same about her little dog.
