A Good Man Is Hard to Find
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40 free A Good Man is Hard to Find trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard to Find is the most anthologized story she wrote, and one of the most argued over. It starts as a comedy about a bickering family on a car trip and ends, a few pages later, in a roadside encounter that readers have been debating since the 1950s. This quiz follows the story from the first page to the last: the grandmother's schemes, the stop for lunch, the wrong turn, and the long conversation with the Misfit. Other questions cover the people in the car, the details O'Connor plants along the way, and what she herself said the ending means. A few step outside the text to the author's life, the story's first appearance in print, and the music it inspired. It is written for students revising for a reading quiz or a multiple-choice test, teachers who want ready-made questions, and book-club readers checking how closely they read. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the set for a class.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, why does the grandmother dress up for the long drive?
To die looking like a lady
To die looking like a lady is the point: in a hat, white cuffs and a spray of cloth violets, anyone finding her on the highway would know her class at once.
Q 02In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, what makes the grandmother's son crash on a dirt road?
The cat leaps on him
The cat leaps on him after the grandmother, jolted by a sudden embarrassing thought, upsets the luggage hiding the animal she smuggled along.
Q 03In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, the Misfit's big black car is compared to which kind of vehicle?
A hearse
A hearse is the story's plainest omen: the battered car crests the hill minutes after the crash and stops above the family with three armed men inside.
Q 04Just before the Misfit shoots her in A Good Man Is Hard to Find, what does the grandmother call him?
Her own child
Her own child is how she suddenly sees the killer, and she reaches out to touch him. He springs back and fires three times into her chest.
Q 05Where is the family in A Good Man Is Hard to Find driving on vacation when they meet the Misfit?
Florida
Florida is also where an escaped killer is said to be heading, which the grandmother uses as her best argument for going somewhere else.
Q 06Which roadside barbecue owner speaks the title phrase aloud in A Good Man Is Hard to Find?
Red Sammy Butts
Red Sammy Butts says it while agreeing with the grandmother that nobody can be trusted any more. She has just praised him for selling two strangers gas on credit.
Q 07Why does the escaped killer in A Good Man Is Hard to Find call himself the Misfit?
Punishment exceeds his crime
His punishment exceeds his crime, by his own reckoning: he cannot square what he did wrong with what he has suffered, so he now signs everything and keeps a copy.
Q 08How does the grandmother first learn that the Misfit has escaped in A Good Man Is Hard to Find?
A newspaper article
A newspaper article about the escape is what she rattles at her son on the opening page, hoping the scare will change the family's vacation plans.
Q 09Flannery O'Connor's A Good Man Is Hard to Find, with its roadside massacre, is a landmark of which genre?
Southern Gothic
Southern Gothic uses grotesque, violent events to probe life in the American South, and the label was at its height from the 1940s to the 1960s, O'Connor's working years.
Q 10In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which made-up feature of the plantation house excites the grandchildren?
A secret panel
A secret panel hiding the family silver is her lie to force a detour, and it works: the two older grandchildren scream and kick until the car is turned around.
Q 11In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, where does the grandmother realize the old plantation house really stands?
Tennessee
Tennessee is hundreds of miles from the dirt road she has talked her son onto, and it is also where she wanted the vacation to be all along.
Q 12What is the grandmother's pet, the only survivor of the trip in A Good Man Is Hard to Find, called?
Pitty Sing
Pitty Sing ends the story in the Misfit's arms. The grandmother hid the animal in a basket, against her son's wishes, fearing it would miss her too much.
Q 13In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, where do the Misfit's two henchmen take the family to be shot?
Into the woods
Q 21Which grandchild in A Good Man Is Hard to Find says the fat henchman reminds her of a pig?
June Star
June Star, sharp-tongued throughout, has already insulted the barbecue stop to its owner's wife, who had only asked whether she would like to be her little girl.
Q 22What is the name of the grandmother's rude eight-year-old grandson in A Good Man Is Hard to Find?
John Wesley
John Wesley shares his name with the founder of Methodism, a pointed choice for a boy with no manners. He is one of the first two led away to be shot.
Q 23In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which birds decorate the yellow shirt the Misfit takes from a dead man?
Parrots
Parrots, bright blue ones, cover the sport shirt the grandmother's son wore on the drive. The henchmen carry it back, and the Misfit pulls it on while she watches.
Into the woods go the grandmother's son and his boy first, then the mother, the girl and the baby, while she hears the pistol shots from the ditch.
Q 14In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, whom does the Misfit accuse of upsetting the balance of the world?
Jesus
Jesus is the Misfit's obsession: raising the dead, he says, upset everything, and because he was not there to see it he cannot know it happened.
Q 15In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which offense did a prison doctor tell the Misfit he had committed?
Killing his father
Killing his father is the charge he was told about, but the Misfit insists he remembers the old man dying of the flu, and says he was never shown the papers.
Q 16In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which company's stock made the grandmother's old suitor a rich man?
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola shares, bought when the drink first came out, are why she tells her grandchildren she would have done well to marry Mr. Teagarden.
Q 17In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which fruit did the grandmother's suitor carve his initials into?
A watermelon
A watermelon arrived each week with the letters E.A.T. cut into the rind, the initials of Edgar Atkins Teagarden. One Saturday it never reached her.
Q 18Which animal is chained to a tree outside the barbecue stop in A Good Man Is Hard to Find?
A monkey
A monkey scurries up the tree as the family drives in. Like the billboards along the highway, it is one more gimmick to pull customers off the road.
Q 19In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, what does the Misfit calmly do right after shooting the grandmother?
Cleans his glasses
He simply cleans his glasses: the gun goes down on the ground, he wipes the lenses, and he tells his two men to put her body with the others.
Q 20Which henchman in A Good Man Is Hard to Find is rebuked by the Misfit for calling the killings fun?
Bobby Lee
Bobby Lee, the fat young gunman, treats the murders as sport. The Misfit's sharp answer to him is the last line of the story.
Q 24Which of these jobs does the Misfit tell the grandmother he once held in A Good Man Is Hard to Find?
Gospel singer
Gospel singer is the first trade he lists, followed by soldier, undertaker, railroad hand and farmer. He adds that he has been married twice and caught in a tornado.
Q 25In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, whom does the grandmother blame for the decline she sees everywhere?
Europe
Europe, she tells the barbecue owner, treats America as a bottomless purse. He tells her she is quite right, which caps their long talk about how much better times used to be.
Q 26In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which injury does the mother suffer when she is thrown from the car?
A broken shoulder
A broken shoulder and a gash on her face are her injuries, and she sits in the ditch holding the baby while her two older children shriek with delight at having had an accident.
Q 27In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, what does the grandmother write down as the family leaves home?
The car's mileage
The car's mileage goes in her notes because she thinks it will be fun to say how far they have been when they get back. They never do.
Q 28Which famous title does the grandmother turn into a plantation pun in A Good Man Is Hard to Find?
Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind is her joke about where the plantation went, made as the car passes an old graveyard that once belonged to it.
Q 29From which point of view is A Good Man Is Hard to Find told, staying mostly close to the grandmother?
Third person
Third person narration keeps her at the center without ever giving her a name, and it stays behind with her in the ditch while the others are led away.
Q 30In A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which Georgia city does the family leave at the start of the trip?
Atlanta
Atlanta is home, and the car has barely cleared its outskirts before the grandmother starts pointing out scenery and warning her son about the speed limit.