What Does Good Country People Mean

The two most important souls in the story "Good Country People" belong to Joy-Hulga and

“Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor is a short story told in third person omniscient point of view. The story contains a lot of irony, symbolism, imagery, and many more literary devices. Flannery O’Connor’s purpose was to demonstrate how “good country people” are not so “good.” Instead, they were categorized as “trash” and “good.” The short story interprets how the characters are contradictory and how women are portrayed in 1955 as well as today’s society.

Because of her poor self-image, Hulga Hopewell melts as soon as she sees that the Bible salesman thinks that she is beautiful. He looks at her in a way that no one else ever has before. Manley Pointer not only smiles at her, but gazes at her in admiration and tenderness. The mere idea that this Bible salesman would be drawn to her leaves Hulga in complete astonishment and wonder. The narrator describes Hulga's fascination with the boy's fondness by saying, "It was like surrendering to him completely. It was like losing her own life and finding it again, miraculously, in his" (141). No one, including her mother, had ever seen Hulga as beautiful. For this reason, Manley easily wins her trust, and ultimately, tricks her. Hulga's immediate surrender to Manley

When Manley and Hulga sneak away from the sanctity of the home to rendezvous on the road outside, it is toyed with as a

Foster’s tale begins with the death of Eliza Wharton’s fiancé. It is an ominous sign of circumstances to come for the unsuspecting Eliza. By his death, she is free from an arranged marriage that was not to her liking. With no male figure to promote another marriage

Flannery O’Connor introduces her reader’s too unique short stories. They are “Good Country People” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, having too similar characters in different setting, but with the same symbolic meaning. The comparison between Hugla from “Good Country People” to the grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to find” is interesting, because they both suffer the same fate. In every short story O’Connor has created a intellectual individual who comes to a realization that their beliefs in there ability to control their lives and the lives of other are false. They enviably become the vulnerable, whereas they assumed it would be different. O’Connor has placed two misguide characters, that deem themselves to be manipulative and compulsive. At the end up of each short story they become vulnerable. Hugla from “Good Country People” and the grandmother from “A Good

“Good Country People,” is a classic example of the use of irony as a technique for imbuing a story with meaning. Irony works on many different levels through the piece. Examples of this range from O’ Connors use of clearly ironic dialogue to the dramatic irony that unfolds between Manley and Joy-Hulga. However the most obvious examples can be found in O’Connor’s characterization of these, “Good Country People.” The technique of irony is applied prominently to the character’s names and behaviors to present the contradictions between their expectations and their reality. O’Connor uses her characters to explore common notions regarding, “good” and “bad” people. Using their expectations for one another, O’Connor ultimately expose their

Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor is a story with a lot of ironic elements in it. These are mostly found in the way that the characters depict themselves in contrast of how they truly are. For example, Mrs. Hopewell says that she has no bad qualities of her own, but she is a constant liar is an how she happened to hire the Freemans in the first place and how they were a godsend to her and how she had them for four years. The reason for keeping them for so long was because they were not trash” (O’Connor 247). Mrs. Hopewell is not the only hypocrite in this story; Manley Pointer is also incredibly hypocritical, fake, and manipulative. He depicts himself as a “Bible salesmen”, but in reality he is a con artist. When Hulga opens up his Bible, she sees a flask of whiskey, cards, and condoms in it. This would be seen as incredibly offensive and sinful to a Christian. According to Thomas F. Gusset, “Joy/Hulga begins to discover that the Bible

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.

O'Connor's use of violence holds a similar yet restrained quality in "Good Country People", although there is a shift in its use and context. Hulga, like the grandmother, has her anti-social qualities, which, in Hulga's case, protect her from the world in which she feels vulnerable. The conflict/resolution to "Good Country People" comes at the end, when Hulga leads the Bible salesman to an abandoned barn with the hopes of seducing him. Little to her knowledge, the salesman is not a "good country" guy as she would like to believe. Hulga receives the salesman's kisses with no real passion, but as kind of a bitter curiosity. As the old saying goes though, ‘curiosity killed the cat.' Hulga indulges in Manley Pointer's apparent ease by responding to his requests of her to say "I love you." This allows the Bible salesman to confirm Hulga's overconfidence and take advantage of the weakest point in her life, her leg. The

In this quote, we see Mrs. Hopewell is complementing Manley, but little does she know what he had done to Joy. Considering that when Manley first showed up as a bible seller and a skillful new man and then experiencing what he had done to Joy they obviously judged him based on a first look. In Good Country People the lessons that O’Connor is trying to demonstrate the reader are more about faith and judgment and how we need to be extra careful not to trust anyone and everyone that you come across, unlike Wise Blood in which she teaches lessons about violence and how sometimes lessons can only be learnt through mistakes and

Mrs. Hopewell sympathized with him because he had the same heart condition as her daughter. They also bonded over their conversation about country people. He was seen as a nice boy by Mrs. Hopewell and later Joy. Nobody would have expected that Pointer was going to steal Joy’s wooden leg. They would be definitely not believing that he’s been robbing people for a while either.

After dinner Manley Pointer secretly asks Joy/Hulga to go on a picnic with him the next day. She agrees and during the night she plans to seduce him. She imagines that she easily seduces him and that then, “of course, she had to reckon with his remorse.'; Being of superior intellect she imagines that she takes his remorse in hand and changes it into a

In “good country people”, Hulga’s trust is misplacing and it leads to her artificial leg be stole by Manley. Hulga placing her trust in a stranger and believes the bible salesman is purely good and honest; she even imagines to seduce the salesman. However, the immoral salesman lies to Hulga and takes her wooden leg then disappeared. At last Hulga realizes that good country people are hard to find in the word. Mrs. Hopewell also placing her trust in the immoral bible salesman, both Hulga and Mrs. Hopewell erred in believing that the bible salesman is good and honest. Therefore, misplacing trust in strangers is one of the most important theme leads to the story progresses.

After World War II ended in 1945, numerous opportunities became available to both men and women. The military industry grew rapidly for men during this time, while the women began to invade the work force. After the war ended, many of the women were no longer satisfied with their roles as housewife, so they continued to work alongside their male companions. In addition to the dissatisfaction of the inequality imposed on women, African American men also became disgruntled. They believed that since fighting and dying alongside the whites, they earned a higher place in society than second class citizenship. At this time, “America would have about 50% of population college educated”(Postmodernism, Slide 4), and many families moved into larger