The ending of Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" has received much critical attention. But most critics have failed to realize that spectacles can tell as well as see; that cats can point as well as purr. O'Connor makes good use of such subtle details in the crucial closing lines. Having survived the shock of mass murder, the reader still finds himself face-to-face with the pathological killer, suitably named "The Misfit." Whether his shooting of the grandmother will transform this murderer is, in O'Connor's words, "another story." But she does leave us with two suggestive clues: a dirty pair of glasses and a catalytic cat, Pitty Sing.

Following the shooting, The Misfit "put his gun down on the ground and look off his glasses and began to clean them…. Without his glasses, The Misfit's eyes were redrimmed and pale and defenseless-looking." Unarmed, unspectacled, and unprotected...