Lyrics for A Good Man Is Hard to Find as interpreted by EvilPopkin

A Good Man Is Hard to Find Lyrics
Once in the backyard
She was once like me
She was once like me
Twice when I killed them
They were once at peace
They were once like me

Hold to your gun, man
And put off all your peace
Put off all the beast
Paid a full of these, I wait for it
But someone's once like me
She was once like me

I once was better
I put off all my grief
I put off all my grief
So I go to hell, I wait for it
But someone's left me creased
Someone's left me creased

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avuncular
10-09-2004

Rated 0 
It's supposedly based on the Flannery O'Connor story of the same name. I've only read a small part of it, but surely someone who has can step in and add to this, yes?

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Soundboy
10-20-2004

Rated 0 
I read O'conner's story last night and highly recommend it to anyone who likes ambigoius characters or American short stories. It's only about 30 pages long. The first and second stanzas I'm not making any connections. Anybody have any ideas?

I looked up creased on dictionary.com and it says: To graze or wound superficially with a bullet. I would say more but I dont wanna ruin the end of the story for anyone who might read this. And also I don't think my interpretation is wholy correct. I have some ideas but they arent clicking like I want them.

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ifoundareason
01-24-2005

Rated 0 
well sufjan is writing from the misfit's point of view. Even though the grandmother is the main focus in the story, there is some sympathy to be held for the criminal who has abandoned any intentions on living a good life. He wishes to displease god. I don't want to give away anything in the story, so I'll stop.

Sufjan's lyrics reflect the misfit's lost hope, and his wishes to "putting off all peace." He's given up, and is ready for whatever will come of all he has done. I'm unsure what Sufjan means when he says "she was once like me." I'm hoping someone will clarify that.

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Walty
03-14-2005

Rated 0 
I think what he means by "she was once like me" has something to do with the fact that the grandmother doesn't fully accept Chrisitianity until the gun is put into her face. He is either all or nothing. He says that if Christ really came then you should be a devout Chrisitian and if not you should forget it all and not worry abotu anything. Its really good writing by flannery. She like him does not accept at a time.

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a_transient
05-04-2005

Rated +1 
I agree with all the above statements.

The grandma is also a bad person in the story.
She brings the cat even though no one else wants it in the car. She talks too much, she points out that the man is the misfit and puts everyone in danger. O'Conner was trying to show that the grandma only was good when a gun was pointed at her head and when she came that close to dying. She tried to save herself by telling the misfit that he's a good person and that God loves him. But we all know she is being fake. So I think the song is basically saying that we are all like the grandma in some way. He is singing in the misfits point of view. The misfit is a bad person and he's isn't trying to be good.

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a_transient
05-04-2005

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I agree with all the above statements.

The grandma is also a bad person in the story.
She brings the cat even though no one else wants it in the car. She talks too much, she points out that the man is the misfit and puts everyone in danger. O'Conner was trying to show that the grandma only was good when a gun was pointed at her head and when she came that close to dying. She tried to save herself by telling the misfit that he's a good person and that God loves him. But we all know she is being fake. So I think the song is basically saying that we are all like the grandma in some way. He is singing in the misfits point of view. The misfit is a bad person and he's isn't trying to be good.

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dixiecupdrinking
05-09-2005

Rated 0 
a_transient is onto something - the grandmother, though as close to a protagonist as this story gets, is hardly a role model, certainly not in terms of her fair-weather Christian faith and empathy. Famously, in the words of the Misfit, "she would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

In a way the Misfit is the most authentic character in the story. Sort of a renegade angel of death or something, passing judgement on these self-involved, petty, self-described "Christians."

Though, having been to church often enough to count on my fingers, I'm hardly an authority on Christian criticism, and I kind of hate Flannery O'Connor, probably because from a secular standpoint I find her stories terribly depressing.

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slinkstersars
02-17-2006

Rated 0 
i think this is my favorite song on seven swans. this song is beautiful. sufjan stevens is a beautiful song writer and composer. beautiful.

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jklein
02-25-2006

Rated +1 
What I think about the story and song....

The grandmother's character is the embodiment of complacent, comfortable, luke-warm Christianity. Notice how until it's end, everything in the grandmother's world is perfectly cliche. O'Connor makes it clear, though, that she undergoes a a radical transformation moments before her death, when she offers grace to The Misfit, reaching out and calling him her own child. Among other things she dies in a position of oneness with God, in the position of Christ on his cross or the Budha in meditation, "smiling up at the cloudless sky." His immediate response is to shoot, but the story's end shows the beginning of his own transformation- tears show a new e-motion, a motion out of himself. Since the grandmother is not a "good" character the reader is forced to offer her grace as well, in order to stay within the story's premises.

I think that the song is from the Misfit's perspective, perhaps at the moment after he kills the grandmother. The peace and putting off of grief he speaks of is not authentic peace in Christ, but the "peace" that comes from have a dead spirit, a spirit that is detached from its humanity and all it entails (conscience, vulnerability, etc). Detachment and alienation are the major themes of American modernism, the movement O'Connor was at the end of. The grandmother was once at peace in that way too. Although the two characters are opposites in terms of authenticity and fakeness, she was once like him in that her spirit was also narrowed and deadened before her transformation. In The grace that she offers him and the resulting moving out of himself (his glasses were damp with tears) make him vulnerable, the very thing he has avoided, and that is to be "creased," emotionally, intellectually, and ultimatly spiritually.

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Song of Songs
03-14-2006

Rated 0 
Great explanations from everyone. I've got to read the short story sometime.

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yellowpaperose
10-01-2006

Rated 0 
everyone can read the story here: http://caxton.stockton.edu/jjm27Litt2143/stories/storyReader$6

it is an amazing story, especially if you really look into it and think about it. don't take it at face value... it is so rich and full of meaning. it's also hilarious. and heartbreaking.

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mochajas
10-07-2006

Rated +1 
Some evidence from O'Connor's story that Sufjan is writing from the perspective of The Misfit:

"[The Misfit] had a long creased face and didn't have on any shirt or undershirt." [i.e., "Someone's left me creased"]

I think this song conveys The Misfit's disturbance and incomplete resignation that he must be the instrument of "peace" - in the sense of transcendence following spiritual shock, as opposed to complacency, which "peace" also means at times in the song - for others while remaining unfulfilled himself.

In spurning the grandmother's radical Christian gesture, The Misfit also "puts off all his peace" anew. Previously, his lifestyle had challenged his own (and others') complacency; at that moment, he chooses to joylessly transform his victims (or not), rather than allow himself to be transformed into "peace."

From O'Connor's story:

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."

"Some fun!" Bobby Lee [his accomplice] said.

"Shut up, Bobby Lee," The Misfit said. "It's no real pleasure in life."

Sufjan Stevens imagines in this song that, after their encounter, The Misfit continues to be troubled by the double meaning of "peace," the transformative power of violence, and his own proximity to/involvement in (his victim's) salvation.

For whatever reason, I empathize with Sufjan's "A Good Man" but not "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." I guess it's easy enough to understand wanting faith but rejecting it because faith is a monumental, complicated burden.

O'Connor's characterization is so powerful because The Misfit is struggling with fundamental questions - the meaning of life and Christ's sacrifice - and ultimately with having provided meaning to another that he himself lacks, a kind of self-sacrifice.

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juliam919
10-11-2006

Rated +1 
As for the word "creased", I always just thought it meant like a wrinkle. You know, like pleats in pants. Or when you fold a paper, you are creasing it, you're making it sharp at a point. Maybe it means that the old woman "sharpened" the misfit; she upset him, ruffled him, or caused him to bring out whatever caused conflict in him.

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tooth_brush
12-13-2006

Rated 0 
A note about this song, and John Wayne Gacy Jr, as they relate to O'Connor. A big aspect of O'Connor's writing, and this story in particular, is the notion that all humanity shares in the guilt of original sin. It is only through responsibility to one's self and to others (which is attained through solidarity in Christ) that the ugliness and alienation brought about by a state of sin can be lifted. In A Good Man Is Hard To Find, the grandmother is brought to this realization right before the Misfit murders her. I've always thought of this song as a sort of continuation of the story, from the Misfit's point of view.
I guess this comment is pretty similar to the others. Just thought I'd throw my thoughts in there.

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campfirestring
12-18-2006

Rated 0 
hmm. ive always thought he said "someone's left me greased..." or "someone's love increased" but i agree this is most definately about that short story.

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freiheit
01-09-2007

Rated +1 
I've given a lot of thought to this song, as I've been an O'Connor fan for ages, and it's actually really easy for me to see the last verse being sung from the grandmother's point of view. This is just a theory. I haven't neccessarily settled on anything, as far as this song goes. Just something for you to wrap your brain around.

After her son, daughter in-law, and grandchildren were taken into the woods and shot, she "put off all her grief" to plead with The Misfit and urge him to pray. She shamelessly begs for her life, offering money and lavishing him with cheap compliments, disregarding the loss of her family members. Perhaps why she may find herself "going to hell"? As stated above, "creased" can mean being grazed by a bullet. Far from being "grazed", the grandmother had, in fact, been pummelled through the chest. Perhaps "creased" is simply being used as an alternative for "shot", etc. Our last visual is of the grandmother, in a sort of creased-over position, "half sitting and half laying" in a ditch. That's how she was left. That's how the story ends.

Trying to flay and anatomize the works of Mary Flannery O'Connor and Sufjan Stevens is like fumbling to skillfully execute a brain transplant, blindfolded, with little medical knowledge, while wearing a suit of armor. Luckily, this is songmeanings.net and not a gravely ill patient splayed on an operating table. A song won't haunt us for butchering its meaning ... I hope.

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noclue
01-16-2007

Rated 0 
favorite song on seven swans.

what does once in the backyard mean? i just read the story and can make no connection.

Is paid a fuill of these referring to his time in prison?

I agree with freiheit that the last stanza is from the grandmothers point of view except the going to hell part.

Im so confused... great song

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noclue
01-16-2007

Rated 0 
i just read mochajas explanation and now think the last stanza is from the misfits view.

someone should make a movie

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larsonhicks
03-11-2007

Rated 0 
I think you guys are missing some of the most important imagery in the story. The Misfit is Christ! God's love comes in judgement all of the time.
There are several images that have been mentioned above, but suprisingly, no one's mentioned the fact that:
1) Twice the Misfist bends down and writes in the sand (Christ)
2) The Misfit describes being in jail like being "buried alive"

I know there's more, but I can't find my notes, and my copy of the book is out in the car. Douglas Jones, at New St. Andrew's college gets it - Credenda/Agenda magazine dedicated a whole issue to Flannery. Check it out!

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Joelius_Caesar
04-25-2007

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First off, it's safe to say that O'Connor has a completely different take than Sufjan. I've read O'Connor's story and came away thinking that the Misfit, as Larson has stated, is Christ. He's taking self-righteous, smug, Churchites and putting them through the gauntlet of true Christianity (or persecution). Here are some signs to support this.....

"Daddy was a card himself," The Misfit said. "You couldn't put anything over on him. He never got in trouble with the Authorities though. Just had the knack of handling them."

- this represents God the Father, whom the Jewish leaders (Authorities) had no problem with.
------------------------------------------------------
The grandmother shrieked. She scrambled to her feet and stood staring. "You're The Misfit!" she said. "I recognized you at once!"

"Yes'm," the man said, smiling slightly as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be known, "but it would have been better for all of you, lady, if you hadn't of reckernized me."

- She only recognizes him when her family is in trouble, and she sees him for who he really is. He tells her that it would have been better if she never recognized him, because now she will have to suffer (Jesus mentions a number of times that in order to find your life, you must lose it).

The Misfit also states that he doesn't know why he was locked up, as no one explained it to him. He writes in the sand, doesn't have a shirt (Jesus' clothes were left in the tomb), and speaks of justice in an all-or-nothing way, as if everyone is guilty of something and all guilt deserves the same penalty.


As for Sufjan's meaning, I think....

"Once in the Backyard" represents how children start off the same, on fair ground, but move in new directions. Even though we evaluate by what decions others make after childhood, the Misfit is still like the old woman in that they still possess a sin nature. Even so, from his view, he is now skewed.

"Twice when I killed them." - The Misfit killed them in his mind and in actuality. O'Connor understood that in God's site, sins of the mind were the same as sings of the physical state.

I think the rest of the song deals with the Misfit's close encounter with an emotion that should have been dead long ago - the understanding and acceptance of grace. He is startled by the old woman's desperate change, and how close he came to it himself ("Someone's left me creased"). It is almost as if his determination and acceptance in a sinful, hellbound life are somewhat damaged after his encounter with this woman.

This is just my view. I'm sure Sufjan can enlighten us one of these days as to what he really meant.

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drstringz
05-24-2007

Rated 0 
The last verse I feel is the misfit's sense of apathy and acceptance in the possibility of an afterlife. Of course, Sufjan, like O'conner is deeply religious, and this is probably just my crackpot theory, the the last verse may be when the misfit himself is dying, he was able to "put of all his grief" in life

"If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can-by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him."

the "so i go to hell" may be some sort of spiritual epiphany at the end of his life, realizing, that jesus did raise the dead, which the misfit is highly skeptical of, since he never belives anything that he doesnt see.

and about the "someon'e left me creased" One can tell at the end of the story, that the scincerity that the grandmother shows the misfit frightens him, he actually recoils from her and shoots, most likely unable to deal with these emotional experiences. But he's deeply affected by it, "creased", one may say :]
Compare:
"No pleasure but meanness," which the misfit says in the begining of his conversation with the grandmother
to
"It's no real pleasure in life."
after he shoots her and bobby lee comments about how fun it is to kill.

the misfit seemed to truely see murder as something nessecary, not something fun, despite what he said to the grandmother, and the true compassion that she showed him most likely shook his whole belief system.

well, there's my two cents

...but i'm probably wrong

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Sadex
02-19-2008

Rated 0 
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~surette/goodman.html

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absurdistlove
09-02-2008

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after reading the story and writing a 10 page paper on it, i think that when it says "they were once like me" this is the misfit's way of saying that he was once a normal person with a family and an average life, but he became bitter and turned into the criminal he is. he has accepted the fact that he will go to hell, but the grandmother's reaction has left him confused and conflicted about himself, forgiveness, God, etc. the last line of the story, spoken by the misfit, is "she's have been a good woman, if there was there to shoot her every minute of her life"
he is thinking of how she died in a sort of peace and the reader of the story is unsure if the grandmother really did have a religious epiphany or was simply trying to save herself in any way possible...

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MadeMyself7
12-09-2008

Rated +1 
in a live version of the song sufjan extends the lyrics at the end:


half awake, half asleep
lying half awake, or half asleep
I can feel you there
Like the gun on my head

half awake, or half asleep


I'm sure it has more to do with the story, but I haven't read it yet

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Songdecipherer
04-21-2009

Rated 0 
Flannery o'conner is one of the best writers of all time. It's only fitting that the best musician out there does a beautifully composed song about it!!!! Sufjan I love you!!!!!

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