When faced with death, many people have moments where they change from bad to good in order to make up for the way they lived their lives. Many people often seek penance because they realize that they had sinned in their lives and want to be able to enter heaven so they can live in eternal harmony. In Flannery O'Conner's "A Good Man is hard to Find", the grandmother has an epiphany before she is murdered and finds it in her heart to forgive the man that murdered her family and will murder her in order to receive penance for all her sins and be able to go to heaven upon her brutal death.
Through her words, we see that the grandmother contains many negative traits and puts much emphasis on those traits through her speech. In paragraph 18, she comments on her grandchildren's disrespectful behavior when she states that in her day "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else". She then proves that she is quite disrespectful when she turns around and points out a Negro child who did not have any britches on and states that "little niggers in the country don't have things like we do. If I could paint, I'd paint that picture." She looks down on people who are not as fortunate as she and her family are. Then in paragraph 26, she tells her grandchildren a story about a man who would bring a woman a watermelon every Saturday with his initials on it and that one Saturday no one was home so he just left it on the porch. Then she says that a "nigger boy" saw that watermelon and read the initials E.A.T and took the melon with him. There she shows a prejudice to young black boys and implies that they steal.
Through the dialogue and the actions of The Misfit, we get a feeling that he is a good man who chose the wrong path in life and chooses to forget his wrongs in order to have a clear conscience. In paragraph 85, The Misfit shows a bit of a sincere and understanding side of himself after Bailey upsets his mother.
