Flannery O'Connor once said of her writing, "All my stories are about the action of grace on a character that is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal." This statement is especially true when matched with O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find," in which character plays such an essential role within the story. Through her characters, particularly the Grandmother and the Misfit, O'Conner manages to inject many elements; the characters embody symbols and themes such as O'Brien's message of Christianity.

The primary character in this story is the Grandmother whose epiphany at the end of the story gives the religious and moral push that is underlying the actual text. O'Conner leaves the Grandmother's character unnamed; by doing this and infusing cantankerous dialogue, O'Connor manages to...