Flannery O'Connor was deeply concerned with the values and the direction of the youth of her time. She believed that Christ was no longer enough of a priority to the people of her generation. "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" is representative of O'Connor's concern for the priorities and values of the 1940s.

In exhibiting her concerns, O'Connor paints fairly broad caricatures of the family members in the stories, and of the Misfit as well. The children never show a moment of remorse; they are relentlessly obstinate and impertinent, and none too intuitive. The young girl, June Star, sees her father and brother taken away from the rest of the family and led into the woods. She hears two shots, and sees the young man who led her father and brother away return, holding her father's shirt in his hand. Even after witnessing this, when...