Essay on Good Country People by Flannery O'connor

Mary Flannery O’ Connor is an American writer and essayist. She is widely known for her Southern Gothic style of writing and her used of gnarled characters in her stories. O’Connor is also famed for her twists in her stories, she usually leaves hints towards the stories’ direction in the form of foreshadowing and this is what gives O’Connor’s writing much merit and influence.

“A Good Man Is Hard To Find” and “Good Country People” are two short stories written by Flannery O’Connor during her short lived writing career. Despite the literary achievements of O’Connor’s works, she is often criticized for the grotesqueness of her characters and endings of her short stories and novels. Her writings have been described as “understated, orderly, unexperimental fiction, with a Southern backdrop and a Roman Catholic vision, in defiance, it would seem, of those restless innovators who preceded her and who came into prominence after her death”(Friedman 4). “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” and “Good Country People” are both set in the South, and O’Connor explores the tension between the old and new South. The stories are tow

Thesis Statement: In Flannery O'Connor's short story "Good Country People," the expulsion of the outside world allows for more emphasis on the symbolic nature of each of the active characters.

Changing her name was a very arrogant action. Her arrogance is a major part of her personality. This is evident in her interactions with Mrs. Hopewell. She obviously looks down upon her as ignorant - she stands up in the middle of a meal and says “do you ever look inside and see what you are not?” (637). The arrogance is evident to the reader, because if Hulga were to really look at herself she would see all that she is not. She obviously thinks of herself as above all the good country people, saying “she would be in a university lecturing to people who knew what she was talking about” (637).

Hulga from “ Good Country People” described as manipulative and compulsive, but at the end she became vulnerable. Mrs. Hopewell stated “ Whenever she looked at Joy this way, she could not help but feel that it would have been better if the child had not taken the Ph.D. It had certainly not brought her out any…” (175) The reason for Hugla’s false view of reality is because she has obtained a Ph.D. degree in philosophy, causing her to misunderstand the true value of life. Early on in the novel for Hugla you can’t find the irony behind her false reality, until she meets the bible salesman who corrupts her beliefs. “ I don’t have illusions. I’m one of those people who see through to nothing.”(183) At this point in the novel she still believes she is a rationalist, through every situation she is in, especially, when she doesn’t tell the bible salesman that she loves him. She doesn’t wish to use

Country People” refers to Mrs. Hopewell’s, who is the mother of the main character of the story, judgments of people who she believes she can trust. Thus bringing back the theme mentioned before that Flannery has distrust in people and isn 't happy about the current state

Flannery O’Connor, undoubtedly one of the most well-read authors of the early 20th Century, had many strong themes deeply embedded within all her writings. Two of her most prominent and poignant themes were Christianity and racism. By analyzing, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” these two themes jump out at the reader. Growing up in the mid-1920’s in Georgia was a huge influence on O’Connor. Less than a decade before her birth, Georgia was much different than it was at her birth. Slaves labored tirelessly on their master’s plantations and were indeed a facet of everyday life. However, as the Civil War ended and Reconstruction began, slaves were not easily assimilated into Southern culture. Thus, O’Connor grew up in a highly racist area that mourned the fact that slaves were now to be treated as “equals.” In her everyday life in Georgia, O’Connor encountered countless citizens who were not shy in expressing their discontent toward the black race. This indeed was a guiding influence and inspiration in her fiction writing. The other guiding influence in her life that became a major theme in her writing was religion. Flannery O 'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of a Catholic family. The region was part of the 'Christ-haunted ' Bible belt of the Southern States. The spiritual heritage of the region profoundly shaped O 'Connor 's writing as described in her essay "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South" (1969). Many

By definition joy means a great feeling of pleasure and happiness. In Mary Flannery O'Connor's short story Good Country People, Joy Freeman was not at all joyful. Actually, she was the exact opposite. Joy's leg was shot off in a hunting accident when she was ten. Because of that incident, Joy was a stout girl in her thirties who had never danced a step or had any normal good times. (O'Connor 249). She had a wooden leg that only brought her teasing from others and problems in doing daily activities. Joy was very rude as well. In the story it speaks of her comments being so rude and ugly and her face so glum that her mother's boss, Mrs. Hopewell, would

Characterization is the most prevalent component used for the development of themes in Flannery O?Connor?s satirical short story ?Good Country People.? O?Connor artistically cultivates character development throughout her story as a means of creating multi-level themes that culminate in allegory. Although the themes are independent of each other, the characters are not; the development of one character is dependent upon the development of another. Each character?s feelings and behavior are influenced by the behavior of the others.

Joy-Hulga, who had grown cynical and cold as she grew up with only one leg and heart ailment, creates an image that she is smarter and better than the rest of the characters in the story. Her education and self-absorption seemed to instill this attitude in her to greater extent than if she hadn’t studied and read so much. Her weakness is the feeling of power she believed she gained from her studies. She refers to herself as a person who “sees

Hulga, limited by her disabilities of being handicapped and her weak heart as she grew older, her life has been restricted to the home she grew up in which is why she distants herself from everyone and has only sticked with her belief in philosophy. Mrs. Hopewell’s character is based on her simplistic view of everyone either being a “good country people” whom are described as poorer than landowners like mrs Hopewell and Hulga or “white trash” describes as poor and uncultured. She is just like Hulga in the sense that she believes she is superior to everyone else and thinks she can distinguish between these two classes which are the hard working people or the untrustworthy people. Mrs. Hopewell has never really let Hulga grow up and still treats her as if she was still a ten year old because she does think philosophy would open many doors for her daughter and has never accepted her the way she is. Hulga has all the education and degrees to start her own life but her mother is the cause of this pause in her life.

Flannery O’Connor was born Mary Flannery O’Connor on March 25, 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, as the only child to Edward F. O’Connor, Jr., and Regina (Cline) O’Connor. Later in 1941, Flannery O’Connor’s father dies of lupus while O’Connor is in Milledgeville, Ga. After her father’s death, O’Connor rarely speaks of him and continues to be active in school projects such as drawing, reading, writing, and playing instraments. Further, in the summer of 1942, O’Connor graduates and enters Georgia State College for Women as a sociology and English major. Moreover, O’Connor took on the name Flannery O’Connor, dropping Mary from her signature.

Good Country People'; by Flannery O’Connor is an excellent example of irony in literature. From beginning to end it has a steady procession of irony, much of it based on the title of the story: “Good Country People.';

"The representation of the grotesque is a characteristic of much 20th century writing" (Holman 61). Almost all of O 'Connor 's short stories usually end in horrendous, freak fatalities or, at the very least, a character 's emotional devastation. People have categorized O 'Connor 's work as "Southern Gothic" (Walters 30). In Many of her short stories, A Good Man Is Hard To Find for example, Flannery O 'Connor creates grotesque characters to illustrate the evil in people.

In each of Flannery O’Connor’s stories there is a very different perspectives in the stories also in the different time periods. Each of these women bring a very different look on life. This is not always a good thing. We see that some of these women only want to dwell in the past, to never move forward, always hoping to move backwards instead. They are still living in the past because the present and the future seem scary. O’Connor introduces Mrs. Hopewell, the Grandmother, and Julian’s Mother who are main characters in her stories. Each of these women believe in something that does not exist anymore. O’Connor does not allow us the privilege of knowing their first name or even much about these ladies. Each of these women show people their southern take on the world which conveys an extremely patronizing attitude on life. Their world is changing and if they wanted to they could have grabbed ahold of it. They have a chance to explore these new changes although they seem unwilling. The O’Connor’s stories we see Mrs. Hopewell as a petty and condescending woman , the Grandmother as a