The setting of the story is centered on a typical family's travel to the state of Florida. However, along the way, they suffer a horrible automobile accident, and the villainous, escaped convict known as "The Misfit" murders the family. The initial sentence in the story is a protest by the grandmother. The grandmother's intentions were to persuade the family plans of traveling to Florida instead a trip to Tennessee. Consequently, from the initial dialect, and many to follow, the grandmother presents one demand after another which carries throughout the story to ultimately seal her family's fate and her own.

The grandmother's first attempts to defend her self-indulgent demands by proclaiming to Bailey, her son, "I wouldn't take my children in any direction

Upon leaving for the vacation, it is the grandmother who is first in the car ready to go, on their precarious trip to death. In contrast, her encounter with the Misfit illustrates that she was the least prepared for death. When stopping in at The Tower for lunch, the grandmother and Red Sammy, the owner, converse about the present repulsiveness of the world. After hearing their chat, it seems ironic that Miss O'Connor chose the story's title. Contradictorily, the grandmother announces her opinion by saying, "People are certainly noticed like they used to be." (323). Red Sammy comments: "A good man is hard to find. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more." (323). This quote basically explains the irony in the title of the story, and also tells us that Red Sammy, along with the grandmother, supposedly lived in a better era where people were more trustworthy, and respectful. The grandmother, although sincere, is ignorant of her hypocrisy. She has already expressed some of the flaws she possesses in relation to her day an age by referring to a little black boy as a "pickaninny," and continues to highlight this flaw through passing judgment, making the remark that he probably doesn't have any britches. Ironically, her compliant is further strengthened in the eyes of the reader by the author's method of presenting the argument or complaint through a cha

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 950
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)