The Concept of a Journey in Flannery O’Connor’s

“A Good Man is Hard to Find”

and Eudora Welty’s “The Hitch-Hikers”

Submission date: 18/5/2009

 Many critics 1 often compare works by Eudora Welty and
Flannery O‘Connor, in which they find a number of similar features. The
similarities concern not only the setting of their stories, but also the main
topics, qualities of the major characters and the relationships between them.
Therefore this essay analyses two short stories – “A Good Man is Hard to
Find” 2 by Flannery O’Connor and “The Hitch-Hikers” 3 by Eudora Welty –
with the aim to find correspondence between them. Car travel plays a very
important role in both of the stories, for this reason, the essay focuses on the
motive of the journey and the way it is depicted in each of the works. The
purpose is to find out whether there is more correspondence within this
aspect besides the pure fact that the main characters travel by car.
The main character of “The Hitch-Hikers”, a salesman Tom
Harris, gives a lift to two hitch-hikers – a talkative guitar player and his
rather quiet companion Sobby. Harris wants to get to Mephis but he stops in
Dulcie to arrange accommodation for the tramps in the back porch of the
Dulcie Hotel – apparently the only one in the town. While Harris is talking to
the proprietor of the hotel, whom he knows well, the guitar player is badly hit
in his head, probably by Sobby, and dies in local hospital a day later.
In “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, the main characters are a
family with three children and a thin grandmother with very little authority,
who go for a three day’s trip to Florida. On their way, however, the
grandmother persuades the rest to turn off the main road and visit an old
mansion, where, she claims, a treasure is hidden. When they drive down a
dirt road far from civilisation, they have an accident a get found by a
runaway criminal, The Misfit, who shoots them all dead.
As mentioned above, the central topic of the stories is a car
journey. Every journey has its purpose, start and destination. Although it is

1
E.g.: Sarah Gordon in Flannery O'Connor: The Obedient Imagination p. 23
or Ted Ray Spivey in Flannery O'Connor: The Woman, the Thinker, the Visionary pp. 8, 42
2
First Published in 1955, in a short story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find
3
First Published in 1941, in A Curtain of Green

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not explicitly said, the circumstances suggest, that the family in O’Connor’s
story goes for a trip or a three-day holiday while Harris in Welty’s story
travels on business. At the beginning of O’Connor story, the grandmother
tries to persuade her son to go to Tennessee instead of Florida 4, so the
destination seems not fixedly given at this stage, which indicates that the
purpose of their journey is not a duty. Also the fact that they decide to turn
off and go to the mansion suggests that they do not have to arrive at their
destination on time 5. So the family leaves home for another place.
On the other hand, Harris from Welty’s story is coming back
from a business trip during which he “saw people in Midnight and Louise”
and he is heading to Mephis now, which is described as his “base” where he
“would like to do something that night”. 6 Although the directions of the
journeys described in the stories are opposite in terms of leaving home and
coming back, their aim is the same. Both – the family and Harris – are
heading for a place where they would relax and enjoy themselves. Thus at the
beginning of each story, the journey in introduced as a transition between the
daily routine and some kind of entertainment. Its role is to draw the
characters closer to something pleasurable.
Despite their optimistic destinations, both of the journeys are
interrupted by an unpleasant event 7, which completely changes the situation
and also the future of the characters (if there is any left after it). In both
stories, the drive ends with a death, or more precisely a murder, of one or
more characters. A more detailed description of the murderers, however, will
be given later. First, it is important to focus no the development which
precedes the tragic end.
Both in Welty’s as well as in O’Connor’s story, the final course
of events is radically influenced by a decision of a major character to do
something unusual, something different from their normal habits. In “The
Hitchhikers”, Harris’s decision to give a ride to two homeless men is

4
O’Connor 137
5
O’Connor 139
6
Welty 62
7
A car crash and encountering The Misfit in O’Connor’s story (144 – 153) and the fatal injury of the
guitar player in Welty’s story

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described as something done “rather out of a dream”. 8 The reason why he
stops and offers his help is a sudden wave of emotions that he feels at the
sight of two tramps. It is not out of sympathy that he picks them up, but his
attention is caught by the two figures and their guitar glistening in the setting
sun, which brings back a particular sensation he experienced in his
childhood, when he felt strong and self-confident, full of eagerness to
conquer the world. 9 By letting the two people in his car, Harris expresses his
liking for the emotion and wants to preserve it, but his decision has the
opposite effect and changes the direction of his journey considerably.
Similarly, the family in O’Connor’s story had originally
different plans for their journey and the trip to the ancient mansion was not
included it them at all. However, their grandmother’s story about a treasure
hidden in the old building excites the children’s interest to such a level that
their father – grandmother’s dear only boy Bailey – agrees to go there,
although he usually does not want to waste time with nonsense like this. 10
Surprisingly, the idea of hidden family silver – no matter how unrealistic it is
– appeals to him too and his will and reason have to struggle with the
emotional part of his personality. 11 His feelings finally win and he submits to
the childish (or senile) wish of the family and of his own subconsciousness
and decides to turn off for the old house. 12 Just as Harris in Welty’s story
does, Bailey acts in a different way from his normal habits, which has a more
serious impact on the further development of the journey than anyone
expected.
In both stories, this decision leads the travellers close to the
murderer, whom no one suspects at the beginning. On the contrary, both
Harris and the family think that the people they have met will help them.
Harris hopes that the presence of the two hitchhikers will bring back his
childhood memories and positive emotions. The family in O’Connor’s story

8
Welty 62
9
Welty 62
10
O’Connor 142 – 143
11
This struggle is suggested by his straight look and „his jaw as rigid as a horseshoe“
(O’Connor 143)
12
O’Connor 143

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expects The Misfit and his companions to help them out of trouble caused by
their car accident. 13 However, none of the expectations is fulfilled and the
course of the journey is gradually getting out of their hands.
There is also correspondence between some of the murderers’
qualities. In O’Connor’s story it is The Misfit, a runaway criminal, who had
to spend some time in prison because he is supposed to have killed his
father. 14 The murder in “The Hitchhikers” is not explicitly described but there
are hints for the reader to deduce what has happened. The simplest
interpretation offered by a passer-by character, is that Sobby wanted to drive
away with Harris’s car while he was arranging for their accommodation in
the hotel but the guitar player tried to stop him and thus he got deadly
injured. 15 But the case is open also to other interpretations because, as Harris
himself suggests, it might have been “the other way round” too. 16 For this
reason, the guitar player can be taken not only as a victim of the crime but
also as the aggressor and a potential murderer. Besides, Sobby hardly ever
talks and the guitar player has to speak and also act for him, 17 on the other
hand the guitar player’s name is never mentioned in the story. Thus each of
the two hitch-hikers lacks something which the other one possesses. They
complement each other perfectly, which makes them function as one
character rather than two. For this reason it is irrelevant to speculate who the
aggressor was or what exactly happened and it is better to focus on the
characters themselves and the way they influence the course of the journey.
Both The Misfit and the hitch-hikers have spent some time
isolated from the civilisation. The Misfit was in prison and the tramps have
just come back from the mountains, where they “had … owls for chicken and
foxes for yard dogs” but where they “sung true”, as the guitar player himself

13
O’Connor 145 – 146
14
O’Connor 149 – 151
15
Welty 66
16
Welty 66
17
The only words Sobby sais in the story is his answer to Harris inquiry about their diet:
„Dewberries. “ The rest of the conversation with Harris is administrated by the guitar player, who
also calls to Harris to stop because Sobby wants to give back a beer bottle, which later unfortunately
becomes the supposed murder weapon.

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describes it. 18 By this commentary he expresses his disillusionment with the
civilisation to which he has just returned. Similarly, The Misfit says that the
world has nothing to offer him 19 and he tries hard to find something which
would bring him satisfaction. Their disappointment and lack of happiness at
the end of their journey back to civilisation is so strong that they stop at
nothing just to achieve a satisfactory answer to their questions. In both
stories, their meeting the car with travellers is one of the first encounters with
normal society, by which they try to assimilate, but without much success.
The guitar player is killed and The Misfit’s disillusionment grows even
stronger after killing the family. 20
Concerning the course of the journey, the main function of both
The Misfit and the hitch-hikers’ intervention is to end the journey earlier than
it was originally intended. Neither Harris nor the family expect that their
journey will be brought to an end by this encounter. However, it happens and
the journey ends together with someone’s life. The often used metaphor in
which life is compared to a journey is taken to extremes in these stories. An
everyman character is overcome by a sudden wave of emotions and
consequently makes a decision which seems to be of little importance but
later turns out to be fatal.
Form all that has been mentioned in this essay, it can be
concluded that the concept of journey plays a similar role in both of the
analysed stories. In both “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “The
Hitchhikers”, the original purpose of the journey is to take the main character
or characters to a place of relaxation and entertainment. On the way,
however, a major character makes a decision which is not typical for their
normal behaviour and which radically changes the course of the journey.
Thank to this decision new characters get involved in the plot 21 and the
journey is brought to an end by them. Although the destinations in both
stories were originally optimistic, the real end of the journeys is death. For

18
Welty 64
19
O’Connor 150
20
O’Connor 153
21
The Misfit in “A Good Man is Hard to Find and the tramps in “The Hitch-Hikers”

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this reason, the journey in both stories can be also perceived as a metaphor
for human life.

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Bibliography:

1. Welty, Eudora. The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich, 1980.

2. O'Connor, Flannery. Collected Works. New York, N.Y.: Literary Classics of

the United States, 1988.

3. Gordon, Sarah. Flannery O'Connor: The Obedient Imagination. Athens:

University of Georgia Press, 2000. Available at:
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=iwrOSu3aBoIC&oi=fnd&pg
=PR9&dq=welty+o%27connor+a+good+man&ots=zY174jBRWE&sig=OR
Basom7ejF7qxEyzcnMGs0IJqk#PPA23,M1

4. Spivey, Ted Ray. Flannery O'Connor: The Woman, the Thinker, the
Visionary. Macon, Ga: Mercer Univ. Press, 1997. Available at:
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=b67dpMaALb4C&oi=fnd&
pg=PA15&dq=welty+o%27connor+a+good+man&ots=P1YICx7abg&sig=r
U12kG2wYKe13CFSQ7pG9XnkeHY#PPA16,M1

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