The Misfit, the bad seed in Flannery O'Connor's short story, is commonly deemed a logician of no mean wit. He has been pictured as a modern Pascal who wagers wrong ( Cobb ), a rigorously empirical Doubting Thomas ( Scouten 63 ), a mental ''thoroughbred with a curious and active nose'' ( Currie 149 ), and an instinctive scholar plumbing reality ( Jones 837 ). Other critics describe him as a rationalist who ''has to know 'why''' ( Feeley 75 ), a thinker ''recalling age-old debates about theodicy'' ( Johansen 38 ), …
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…eated as a catalyst for the grandmother's epiphany, The Misfit is a fruitful device. Better to leave him there, for cast as an informed skeptic, he is woefully barren. He has been theologically clipped by an author who spurned the dictates of logic and evidence for the claims of Mystery. The Misfit's sniveling befuddlement, self-justification, and skewed ethics betray a muddled intellect and, worse, a dangerous one. - Quoted by GARY SLOAN , Louisiana Tech University