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Second, the arrogance of the grandmother is shown throughout the whole story. The reader can first get a glimpse of it when her dressing is described. She wore a dress with gloves and a fancy hat, contrasting her attire with the children's mother's simple slacks and handkerchief. Here, the grandmother specifically chose her fancy clothes so that "in case of an accident, anyone seeing her dead on the highway would know at once that she was a lady." Hence, her reasoning is immediately identified as being shallow, which hints to her arrogance. Later in the story, she lectures her grandchildren, telling them how they should learn to be more respectful, and as she is saying that, she drifts off when she sees a colored child on the street, calling him a "cute little pickaninny" and then assuming that he did not have any britches on because he did not have things like her and her family, her reason being that no black people did. Namely, the grandmother was always referring to herself as being a lady, thinking that the clothes she wore made her better than everyone else around her. She complained about how people were "certainly not nice like they used to be," trying to seem like a good-hearted person, when in reality her actions demonstrated her to be otherwise. However, the grandmother's character is arrogant, thinking that she was superior to everyone around her. She falsely believed that wearing fancy clothes and calling herself a "lady" actually made her one, but in reality it only accentuated the arrogance in her personality.
Third, the selfish and manipulative traits of the character are seen throughout the story as the grandma is trying to control her family and manipulate them to do what she wants for her own selfish reasons. It is first seen in the first few paragraphs when she is determined to go to Tennessee for her own personal gain, but tries to deceive her family into thinking she has other selfless reasons.