Choose a significant short passage from "A Good Man is Hard to Find" that captures the essence or theme of this work. You may choose dialogue, a descriptive passage, or a narrative excerpt. First, cite the quote, and then briefly (in one sentence) explain its relevance to the meaning of the work.

The last few lines of Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" are comprised of a conversation between a rather philosophical killer who calls himself the Misfit and one of his cohorts, a demonstrably less thoughtful young man called Bobby Lee.
The Misfit has just been speaking with the grandmother, a woman who has long espoused the belief that people used to be better and more trustworthy than they are now; she longs for a bygone era. However, she does not seem to realize that, while this bygone era may have been better for her, it was worse for people of lower status and for people of color. She is revealed to be both classist and racist.
As her family members are being killed, one by one, she seems to have some kind of realization, reaching out to touch the Misfit to bridge the figurative gap between them. In this moment, he shoots her at point-blank range:

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

The grandmother's definition of goodness had more to do with people's class rather than people's honesty and morality, and she only realizes that the divisions she drew among people were arbitrary and cruel when she fears for her own life.
It is only when she faces death does it occur to her to see the ways in which people are similar—to see what we all share—and she finally becomes a good woman (one who is actually good and not just one who fits her initial classist and racist definition). It is ironic, of course, that it takes a killer to recognize this.