In the story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" The Misfit is such an important and strange character, he's bound to "mean something.” What is it?

In Flannery O'Connor's shocking short story, "A Good Man is Hard
to Find," I believe the Misfit is symbolic, based upon the theme that seemed to drive much of
O'Connor's literature.

Religion is perhaps the most important
element of O'Connor's writing. The author believed that someone generally needed to be hit on the
head with a two-by-four before he or she would notice that God was trying to speak with him or
her.

In this case, it is the Grandmother who is not
listening.

The Grandmother is extremely annoying. One might feel she
drives the Misfit to kill her, except that he kills the rest of the family as well. She has no
true sense of a meaningful, honest relationship with God.

The
violence at the hands of the Misfit is what really wakes the Grandmother up to her own lack of
faith. Even though her family has already been murdered, it is not until her own life is
threatened that the Grandmother has a religious "epiphany"
(awakening).

Symbolically, the Misfit may represent all that is
hurtful, harmful or even evil in this world. In light of how O'Connor sees human beings and their
faith in God—or lack thereof, it would seem that the Misfit represents the adversity and true
suffering that comes knocking on one's door: often times, perhaps as O'Connor sees it, the
only time someone finally has time for God—when things get really bad...even
at the moment just before death.