Good Country People Analysis Essay

Joy-Hulga plans to seduce Manley Pointer into being intimate with her. She assumes he is gullible because he is a young boy; seducing him would be like taking candy from a baby. Joy-Hulga is the victim of an bewildering accident; she now plans to make Manley Pointer a victim of her seduction. Joy-Hulga joins her young prey in the loft of a barn. This is her opportunity to have Manley Pointer all to herself. She falls victim to his first tactic of getting her to tell him she loved him. He proceeds by persuading her to show him how take off her wooden leg. “Without the leg she felt entirely dependent on him (O’Connor 184). This is the moment that the tables turn and Joy-Hulga becomes the victim of Manley Pointer’s manipulation. Mr. Pointer runs off with Joy-Hulga’s artificial leg and she is left sitting there in the loft. Joy-Hulga learns that there are good country people in the world and then there are some people like Manley Pointer who are no good at all.

Everyone wants to believe that they are beautiful. For this reason, we tend to seek out that approval from others including our parents, friends, and other loved ones. Flannery O'Connor's story, "Good Country People," focuses on this particular theme. In her narrative, a young girl named Joy Hopewell longs for her mother's approval. When she does not find it, Joy begins to believe that she is unworthy of anyone's admiration. This basic premise allows for Manley Pointer to easily win Joy's trust. Flannery O'Connor includes this string of events in order to show the significant role parents play in developing their children's self-esteem, as well as reveal that even though Joy Hopewell begins to believe that she is not beautiful, she

“A Good Man is Hard to Find," by Flannery O'Connor, shows a family trip to Florida which end to an unexpected death at the end of the story. In the progression of this story, O’Connor has presented women as naïve with graceful images. Women are presented as the weaker sex while men are given more importance and powerful roles. In this regard this story can be viewed as feministic point of view. Feminism is self-awareness among women about women’s rights on the base of political, social, and economic equality to men (Thompson 18). Feminist Criticism offers a Unique understanding of Flannery O'Connor’s short story A Good Man is Hard to Find because it reflects

Mary Flannery O’Connor is considered one of the most successful short story writers in history. She composed her works during a period of prosperity and economic boom following World War II. Although the economy was thriving, the 1950’s were a period of struggle for women’s rights, as well as other minorities. (Digital History) Based on her success, one could conclude O’Connor exceeded all barriers against women during the fifties. Flannery O’Connor’s life experiences based on her faith, her novels, and the time period of the 1950’s contribute to her unique writing style.

In addition to the characterization of Joy-Hulga O’Connor’s depiction of Mrs. Hopewell creates irony that begins with her names. Like joy, Mrs. Hopewell, is full of the same limiting perceptions of those around her. Demonstrated by the belief that country people are “good”, or the “salt of the earth.” In much the same way Joy’s impairment results in Mrs. Hopewell’s perpetual assumption that joy is like a child. She regards her with

The main recurring theme in Flannery O’Connor’s stories is the use of violence towards characters in order to give them an eye-opening moment in which they finally realize their true self in relation to the rest of society and openly accept insight into how they should act or think. This theme of violence can clearly be seen in three works by Flannery O’Connor: A Good Man is Hard to Find, Good Country People, and Everything That Rises Must Converge.

An ardent Catholic as she was, Flannery O’Connor astonishes and puzzles the readers of her most frequently compiled work, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. It is the violence, carnage, injustice and dark nooks of Christian beliefs of the characters that they consider so interesting yet shocking at the same time. The story abounds in Christian motifs, both easy and complicated to decipher. We do not find it conclusive that the world is governed by inevitable predestination or evil incorporated, though. A deeper meaning needs to be discovered in the text. The most astonishing passages in the story are those when the Grandmother is left face to face with the Misfit and they both discuss serious religious matters. But at the same time it is the

From an hour of watching TV, you may see two commercials telling you to embrace yourself. Society teaches us to embrace who we are and dress how we want to be expressed. Yet, there is an equally influential part of society that teaches us to suppress certain aspects of our lives. So where do we, as people, stand on this complicated issue? Do we express only the good parts of ourselves and hide all the negative parts, or can we do more and express both the positive and negative aspects of our lives. No matter what you choose to believe you too can relate to the Bible salesman. People either choose to show what they believe in or choose to hide what they truly prioritize.

Flannery O’Connor was a short story author from Savannah, Georgia. She has produced many critically acclaimed pieces and has won several awards for them. Two distinct pieces she wrote are titled The Life You Save May Be Your Own and Good Country People. While both of her stories are unique, the underlying storyboard and character creation process that O’Connor used is the same throughout her stories. Her stories usually involve one or more self-centered woman, a younger person who become the victim of egregious crime, and a conniving male driven by his own motives. Good Country People and The Life You Save May Be Your Own do not stray from this rule. In either story, the narrative is driven around a shocking tragedy that is very unexpected. Even though in the tragedies committed in the book always have a belligerent and a victim, it is not easy to discern who amongst the two are the antagonist and the protagonist. In either of these narratives, the tragedy that occurred within the stories blurs the line between antagonist and protagonist.

During the nineteenth and twentieth century there was a number of changes made in America. Woman were looked at as less than back then and to a certain degree they still are today. There was a number of women that died or went insane because of the standards that they had to meet in order to be considered good women. In this research paper I will talk about the experience of the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper and Blanche DuBois from the story A Streetcar Named Desire. It will be shown within these pages how the moral and societal standards for women were far different than they were for men, and how the standards changed over the years. Furthermore it will be shown how this effected the women of those two stories.

Exploring the idea that all men are born sinners, O’Connor demonstrates immoral indulgences entertained by various characters. Readers are introduced to grandmother, an elderly woman whose consistent unscrupulous behavior exhibits her inner motives. Grandmother uses subtle, indirect confrontation to get her way until she is faced with The Misfit, a runaway criminal who believes that crime is a justifiable. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” Flannery O’Connor uses characterization to display a loss of morals, imagery to portray evil in society, and symbolism to emphasize the struggle of obtaining grace to prove how life is nihilistic without religion.

Feminism and Historicism play a major part in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Good Country People”, first published in 1955. The story focuses on the importance of identity and the parallels between truth and deception. In “Good Country People”, the Hopewell family, maintain a small farm in rural Georgia with the help of tenants the Freemans. The pious Mrs. Hopewell’s mottos ‘nothing is perfect’ and ‘it takes all kinds to make the world’ are manifested in her unmarried thirty-two year old daughter, Joy who later changes her name to Hulga, wears a prosthetic wooden leg because of a childhood accident. Hulga who has a Ph.D. in Philosophy, cannot advance her academic aspirations because of a weak heart; because of this she must live in her

The quote acts as foreshadowing for what her attitude towards life will be. We later find out that she is right, but that she does not live by her credo. Manley Pointer exploits this weakness as soon as she opened her door. Showing up as a pathetic bible salesman with an ailing heart (which is coincidentally exactly what Joy-Hulga had) laying the old guilt trip on Mrs. Hopewell on how no one wants to deal with a simple country boy like himself, he attacks her weakness right at the heart of it. Not more than two minutes after he knocked on the door, he ends up eating dinner with them and at the conclusion is even invited to return any time he’d like. His persona blinds Mrs. Hopewell and prevents her from being somewhat suspicious of Manley. At the end of the story, we see that Mrs. Hopewell is still clouded by her weakness and refers to Manly as simple as he passes through a field by Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman. Unlike Mrs. Hopewell, Joy-Hulga faces and comes to a realization of her weakness.

Characterization is the biggest component that helps build on the themes of identity in the short story “Good Country People” written by Flannery O’connor. The theme itself is dependent where as the characters are independent of each other. The characters behaviors build within each other.

Though, Joy-Hulga finds herself conflicted when Manley reveals his truest self, not the innocent demeanor he acted out, Joy-Hulga, a strong academic woman on the outside collapses into the innocent when the whiskey comes out of the Bible. “Without the leg she felt entirely dependent on him. Her brain seemed to have stopped thinking altogether and to be about some other function that it was not very good at. Different expressions raced back and forth over her face.” (O’Connor 15) Consequently, for this action of taking off her artificial leg, she is vulnerable and dependent on this boy that could