A Good Man is Hard to Find The Misfit Quotes

The Misfit

Quote 4

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." (140)

Here someone besides the grandmother is talking about being "good," only this time it's the person who's obviously not good. After all the grandmother said about "good people" and The Misfit himself being good, The Misfit now judges that she would have been good in the unlikely circumstance of him continuously threatening to shoot her. What does The Misfit mean when he says this? It looks like he's recognizing that the grandmother's final act, for which he killed her, was genuinely good. This implies that it was her confrontation with him, and with death, which made her good. But if the grandmother only became good at that moment, what does it mean to be good?

The Misfit

Quote 5

"Shut up, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life." (142)

This is the reversal of what the Misfit said earlier about meanness being the only pleasure in life. What he's just done – shooting the grandmother dead – merits being called "mean," yet apparently he doesn't feel good about it. Perhaps he's fallen into complete despair, since now there's nothing left to give him pleasure. This would mean that killing the grandmother seriously affected him. Or perhaps it's the beginning of his transformation into a good man. Perhaps both.

The Misfit

Quote 6

[The Misfit:] "My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. 'You know,' Daddy said, 'it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!"' (99)

Here we have an important insight into The Misfit's personality: he's curious. He's the kind of guy who asks The Big Questions. It's the first suggestion we get that The Misfit may act the way he does because he's thought about things. Viewed in this light, he's not just a thoughtless killer. What he's thought about, rather seriously as we'll see, is religion.