2. Naming/Labeling as a play for power
• “The grandmother” has limited value, but “a lady” is valuable.
• When she says she recognizes the Misfit (477), she’s defining him as
something that doesn’t fit (valueless), something outside society and
therefore dangerous.
• Later she tries to rename him, to transform him from dangerous to safe:
“You’ve got good blood!. . . I know you come from nice people!” (480).
She hopes to neutralize him by using her own value system, at the same
time reiterating her own value according to that system: “You wouldn’t
shoot a lady, would you?” (477).
• It doesn’t work.
3. Recognition – knowledge of oneself or others
• To recognize truly, all the knowledge we’ve relied on must be
questioned and/or overturned.
• The grandmother has seen herself as a good woman throughout
the story. In O’Connor’s view, this is dangerous – a sign that she is
“justified” in her own eyes rather than justified by or before God.
4. Recognition, cont’d.
• After the Misfit and his gang have ripped from under her the
foundation on which her identity is built (that is, the family), she
can see clearly: “Why, you’re one of my babies. You’re one of my
own children!” (481).
• In death we see her “with her legs crooked under her like a child’s
and her face smiling up at the cloudless sky” (481). Why does she
die with a smile on her lips? How does this compare with her
earlier desire to be seen as “a lady” if she were found dead on the
highway?
