Quote 1
[The grandmother:] "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did." (1)
We get a lot in this seemingly ridiculous warning from the grandmother. First, it makes introduces The Misfit right at the beginning of the story, and gives the reader the feeling that a confrontation with him is inevitable. It also sets up the story's great irony: the grandmother will be the one who brings everyone to The Misfit, by taking them down the wrong road, by indirectly causing the accident, and then by telling The Misfit that she recognizes him. Even if the encounter with The Misfit is unintended, should the grandmother to be faulted for this, especially in the moment when she reveals she knows who he is? That she even brings up "conscience" here is also suggestive. The grandmother is implicitly setting herself up as a "good" person, since good people are people who follow their conscience.
Quote 2
"You must have stolen something," [the grandmother] said.
The Misfit sneered slightly. "Nobody had nothing I wanted," he said. "It was a head-doctor at the penitentiary said what I had done was kill my daddy but I known that for a lie." (116-117)
The grandmother, still trying to convince The Misfit that he's a good man, assumes that the crime he committed must have been the most "respectable" kind, (i.e., stealing). She knows better; it was she who brought our attention to The Misfit's being dangerous (presumably a killer) at the beginning of the story. The Misfit's response is revealing. He claims that he's not interested in crime because he wants to get rich or take things from others. What, then, could be his motivation? Nothing, but the pleasure of destroying things, out of "meanness."
Quote 3
[The grandmother] saw the man's face twisted close to her own as if he were going to cry and she murmured, "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children!" She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him and shot her three times through the chest. (136)
The grandmother's "moment of grace" and The Misfit's response. We've got a lot to say about this elsewhere (check out "What's Up with the Ending") because it's the central moment of the story. Is this an actual transformation in the grandmother, a product of delusion, or a last attempt at manipulation? How you see it will also influence how you see The Misfit's reaction. Any reading, though, has to make sense of the violence of the reaction. It's as if at this moment he's encountered something very threatening, completely alien to himself, as in the "snake bite" image. What's either revealing or ironic about that image is that the snake to which the grandmother is compared is a creature often associated with evil or with being an "enemy of man" (as it is in the Bible story of Adam and Eve). Perhaps that's the way genuine good appears to genuine evil.
Quote 4
"Now look here, Bailey," [the grandmother] said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did." (1)
The grandmother first brings up The Misfit not out of genuine fear, but instead to guilt or scare her son into taking the family to Tennessee instead of Florida. (She wants to go to Tennessee to visit relatives.) It's also notable that the grandmother uses moral language – appealing to conscience – as a further means of manipulation.
Quote 5
[The grandmother] knew that Bailey would not be willing to lose any time looking at an old house, but the more she talked about it, the more she wanted to see it once again and find out if the little twin arbors were still standing. "There was a secret panel in this house," she said craftily, not telling the truth but wishing that she were, "and the story went that all the family silver was hidden in it when Sherman came through but it was never found . . ." (45)
Once the grandmother decides she wants to go to the house (out of nostalgia), she purposely says something false to ensure the children will cajole their dad into going there.
Quote 6
"You wouldn't shoot a lady, would you?" the grandmother said and removed a clean handkerchief from her cuff and began to slap at her eyes with it. (86)
The grandmother now begins to convince The Misfit not to shoot her. Her first tactic is to appeal to being a lady. After all, everyone knows it's not proper to shoot ladies.
Quote 7
"Yes, it's a beautiful day," said the grandmother. "Listen," she said, "you shouldn't call yourself The Misfit because I know you're a good man at heart. I can just look at you and tell." (88)
We've already seen the grandmother call somebody (Red Sammy) a good man before, and it seemed pretty artificial. Now she seems to be hoping that she can either appeal to the "good man" in The Misfit, or convince him that he is enough of a "good man" to let her go. That she's sincere seems doubtful. We can't forget that the grandmother has already brought up The Misfit twice as a big, bad, scary man.
Quote 8
"You could be honest too if you'd only try," said the grandmother. "Think how wonderful it would be to settle down and live a comfortable life and not have to think about somebody chasing you all the time." (90)
The grandmother is again trying to work on The Misfit, this time by giving him the promise of a "respectable," and "comfortable" life. Her equation of "goodness" with the values of her social class is clear in what she says. None of this matters in her dealings with The Misfit, who she is woefully unequipped to manage.
Quote 9
"In my time," said the grandmother, folding her thin veiled fingers, "children were more respectful of their native states and their parents and everything else. People did right then. Oh look at the cute little pickaninny!" she said, and pointed to a N***o child standing in the door of a shack. (18)
The grandmother recalls those days of old when people were more respectful. This kind of decency, which is tied to being a "gentleman" or a "lady," is what she thinks it means to be good or to do what's right. In other words, her understanding of goodness if very class-based. What's particularly funny about this passage is the contrast is between the "respect" she's just talked about and her use of the word "pickaninny," a disrespectful and discriminatory term used to refer to African-American slave children. It shows how much of her mindset still belongs to an older southern generation, with their racial prejudices.
Quote 10
"Look at the graveyard!" the grandmother said, pointing it out. "That was the old family burying ground. That belonged to the plantation."
"Where's the plantation?" John Wesley asked.
"Gone With the Wind" said the grandmother. "Ha. Ha." (22-24)
The grandmother's connection to the Old South is made more direct here; apparently the family once owned a plantation. Just like naming her cat after a character in The Mikado, it seems as if the grandmother is eager to display a certain degree of cultural knowledge, appropriate to someone of her social status.
Quote 11
"Listen," the grandmother almost screamed, "I know you're a good man. You don't look a bit like you have common blood. I know you must come from nice people!" (88)
The grandmother's first appeal to The Misfit is that he can't kill her because he must be a "good man." What's comical about it is not only that it seems insincere, but also that she directly connects being a good man to coming from "nice people," and not from "common folk." There's unabashed classism for you, and it's particularly ridiculous in this case; the shirtless Misfit and his two accomplices present everything but a picture "nice people." The grandmother's willingness to apply her own ideal of goodness to someone who so obviously doesn't fit it, doesn't reflect well on her or her idealized views.