Much is made by interpreters of the grandmother’s “selfishness” in this story—after all, it is her tall tale about the plantation that sets the family on its fatal path, and her foolish outburst that convinces The Misfit he will have to kill the entire family.

To this bill of charges, it is often added that during the confrontation in the woods, the grandmother seems overly interested in bargaining for her own life, rather than those of her family members. This can be a bit unfair—she seems genuinely shattered when her son is led away to be killed (calling out “Bailey Boy!”, his childhood nickname), and after all bargaining for one’s life doesn’t seem so crazy when confronted with a serial killer.

But there is no denying that she doesn’t come across very well in this line—The Misfit has just indicated that he will have to kill the entire family, and the grandmother asks for a special exemption for “ladies”, which won’t do anything for her husband and grandchild.

Of course the importance of being a “lady”—appearing (rather than being) morally proper—is a key theme in the story.

The grandmother is hoping to find ethics in the Misfit of respecting the virtue of a “lady” that she associates with herself. He has these only as far as regretting not wearing a shirt and killing the females separately and after the men.

Another moment of black humor – the cat was responsible for the accident that led to the family’s demise. After causing its owners to be massacred, it then cozies up to their killer, who will do just as well as them, provided he agrees to pet and pay attention to it. Despite the grandmother’s belief of how important she was to her cat, Pitty Sing is not concerned that her owner has just been killed and befriends her murderer.

Cue a Werner Herzog monologue about the cruel indifference of nature.

In deciding on the vexed question of what The Misfit represents, it is worth noting the following:

1. The Misfit will appear in a black car, wearing a black hat
2. The family will encounter The Misfit on an ill-advised trip to see an old plantation for which the grandmother has become nostalgic.
3. The Misfit will describe himself as being persecuted for no reason by the state.
4. In the long soliloquy in which The Misfit describes his life, he notes that he has “seen a man burnt alive” and “a woman flogged.” The burning of men and the flogging of women was bound up in the South with the legacy of slavery and the anti-black terrorism that followed Reconstruction.

In other words, O'Connor draws a series of undeniable (though extremely subtle) parallels between The Misfit and the black community. It is worth considering the possibility that the terrible violence he unleashes on the family is a kind of revenge on behalf of the black underclass–an awful reckoning that O'Connor believes the South deserves.

If Christ didn’t really raise the dead—meaning, of course, if there is no promise of eternal life—then it seems as though everything is permitted. If life is meaningless and absurd, we might as well try to maximize our pleasure, and the greatest available pleasure (according to the Misfit’s view) is harming others to demonstrate our own superiority.

The Misfit compares himself, staggeringly, to Christ; despite being a notorious and cold-blooded killer, he feels that he has been unjustly persecuted and punished by the state – “ain’t been treated right.” As he discourses on his similarity to Christ, we hear the sounds of his henchmen executing a mother and her two young children.

The slaughter of innocent children is, of course, associated with King Herod in the Biblical story of Christ.

The grandmother is of course referring to the police, but The Misfit’s vague answer seems to suggest that he’s haunted by some awful, terrifying force.