The function of signature in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find."

Studies in Short Fiction, Wntr, 1996 by Mitchell Owens

Faced with this problem, The Misfit offers a solution whose radical terms point clearly to the arbitrariness of the sign; it is the clarity of these terms that accelerates the grandmother's short-lived and unsuccessful retreat. For The Misfit, the injustice of his treatment by society rests in the imbalance between his dimly recollected crimes and the harsh sentences meted out for them: ". . . I call myself The Misfit . . . because I can't make what all I done wrong fit with all I gone through in punishment" (131). Those who decide upon these punishments feel justified in allotting them because they possess signed documents attesting to the evil he has done. The Misfit, however, refuses to recognize the power of any signature other than his own:

". . . they never shown me [the incriminating] papers. That's why

I sign myself now. I said long ago, you get you a signature and sign

everything you do and keep a copy of it. Then you'll know what

you done and you can hold up the crime to the punishment and see

do they match and in the end you'll have something to prove you

ain't been treated right . . ." (131)

A signature's function is to retain the having-been-present of the signer in the transcendental now. As the tale of the watermelon indicates, however, the efficacy of this retention depends upon the receiver's knowledge of the signing's context; according to The Misfit, the only people who can accurately know the context of signatures are the signers themselves. In the contextually contingent realm of the arbitrary sign, the only intentions one can know are one's own, and the only person with whom one can accurately communicate is one's self. With no originating Word underwriting any particular value, The Misfit's morality of meanness and the southern aristocracy's code of civilized conduct can be seen as equally valid: that is, as equally arbitrary.

It is the grandmother and her family who suffer the implications of this position; the position, in effect, kills them. Attempting to stave off her violent death, the grandmother resorts to the values of gentility, the very terms The Misfit has just denied:

"Jesus!" the old lady cried. "You've got good blood! I know you

wouldn't shoot a lady! I know you come from nice people! Pray!

Jesus, you ought not to shoot a lady . . ." (132)

This retreat is unsuccessful because the structure to which the grandmother turns for shelter has been dismantled by that from which she flees: the assumptions that give validity to the value of blood have been pulled out from under her.

Recognizing that her shaken beliefs will not sway The Misfit, the grandmother turns to the mercantile values that have displaced those beliefs: she offers The Misfit money. The Misfit, however, realizes that the dollar sign is just as arbitrary as the sign of blood, and the offer has no effect on him. The grandmother has been divided between two opposing structures, and now both structures have collapsed.

The grandmother ends her life with a desperate effort to re-inscribe that which has been lost in this double collapse. In this attempt she experiences one last manifestation of the arbitrariness of the sign, by undergoing a final confusion of signifiers. The Misfit has by this time had Bailey shot, and has donned Bailey's colorful shirt. The grandmother is reminded by the shirt of something she cannot name (130); the sign fails to communicate the information it should. The sign fails, and then it misfires: in the moment before her death, the grandmother sees The Misfit as "one of [her] babies," as "one of [her] own children" (132). The concept of familial linkage has become attached to the signifier-shirt by Bailey's wearing of it. When The Misfit wears the shirt, the grandmother sees this notion transmit and connect itself to The Misfit. She fails in this final moment to recognize the arbitrariness of this attachment, and it is from this that The Misfit recoils when he steps back to shoot her.