Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Flannery o connors writing style
Example of symbolism essay
Flannery o connors writing style
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
What is a definition of a “good country person”? A good country person is someone who lives in a rural area where they spend time working their animals. Some good country people are Christians, where they go to church and worship the Lord with their family. Good country people are nice people, they will always help you when you need them and they will always have your back. In the story “Good Country People”, there are some people that do not act like a good country person. In Flannery O’ Connor’s “Good Country People”, the stereotype that is most apparent in this story is what contributes to the irony. The stereotype surrounding “good country people” will lead to the main character of the story of “good country people”, Hulga down the road of surprise and humility. There are two main characters that believe that good country people are uneducated and uncomplicated. The two main characters of this story is “Mrs. Freeman and Joy/ Hulga. There are assumptions to these two characteristics will eventually lead to trouble for Hulga. …show more content…
Changing her name also reflects of how she feels about her mother. When Joy was ten years old, she was in a hunting accident where it caused her to have a wooden leg. This deformity causes Joy to view herself as ugly and unattractive. Joy is also detached from life and everything about it and she does not believe in God. Hulga’s belief in nothing, that there is no God, and she believes that she is smarter than all of the country people that she is surrounded by, end up teaching Hulga a valuable lesson. Given an opportunity to show her “power” with the character Manly, a simple-minded Bible salesman, she learns quickly that the person she was planning to manipulate ended up manipulating and making her look like a
Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" is a story told through the examination of the relationships between the four main characters. All of the characters have distinct feelings about the others, from misunderstanding to contempt. Both Joy-Hulga, the protagonist, and Manley Pointer, the antagonist, are multi-faceted characters. While all of the characters have different levels of complexity, Joy-Hulga and Manley Pointer are the deepest and the ones with the most obvious facades.
“Good Country People” is a story about Joy Hopewell, a very well educated young woman living in the rural south. Joy lost a leg in a hunting accident when she was ten and since then had been forced to wear a wooden replacement. She also had a weak heart and it was this affliction that forced her to remain amongst these “good country people” whom she considered to be intellectual inferiors. Though she had great confidence in her intelligence she had very little self-esteem. Joys’ handicap made her feel ugly, so ugly that much to her mothers’ dismay, she had her name legally changed to the ugliest one she could think of, Hulga. One day a traveling bible salesman named Manley Pointer made a sales call and ended up having dinner with the family.
Hopewell’s daughter, Joy who renames herself to Hulga. Hulga who is also like Phoenix, a victim of circumstances, is highly educated, was shot in the leg while young, and thus has a wooden leg and is also sick in that she has a weak heart. Hulga, goes through these circumstances and takes them negatively, she is seen as not only rude but also always cross and insensitive to other people’s feelings or emotions an example of this is when she shouted at her mother, Mrs. Hopewell, at the table “Woman! Do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!” (Clugston,
Freeman, mother of Carramae and Gylnese and Mrs. Hopewell Hulga’s mother. Both characters have a major impact towards Hulga’s life. Mrs. Freeman, as described by O’Conner is seen more of a realist who speaks and thinks freely. She is a very passionate woman and “had a special fondness for the details of secret infections hidden deformities, assaults upon children”, which in this case applies to Hulgas state of appearance, her deformity the artificial leg. This quote shows the bond Hulga has with Mrs. Freeman since she is very passionate about deformity. Hulga appreciates Mrs. Freeman because she helps her distinguish a more realistic view of life and the world, rather than following the same old good Christian morals. On the other hand Mrs. Hopewell, joys mother is seen as a good woman who has good Christian values. O’Conner uses this symbolistic name of Mrs. Hopewell because she carries hope with her where ever she is. “People who looked on the bright side of things would be beautiful even if they were not” (173). She is a very optimistic good Christian and follows good country people morals. She is as well proud of her ability to see well in anyone she crosses and help any situation that is in a bad state. O’Conner’s usage of indirect characters like Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman play a role in Hulga’s nihilistic life as an angel and a demon. Both constantly attempt to influence their beliefs without forcing their opinions towards
Joy/Hulga has two items that are used alternately to describe her, the eyeglasses that counter her weak eyes and are a sign of her intellectuality, and the wooden leg that she wields through sound and appearance as a weapon against her mother’s solicitude. When Manley Pointer removes her glasses and steals her wooden leg, she is left totally weak and vulnerable. The Bible salesman himself uses the illusion of Bibles as a symbol. He has claimed to have a suitcase full of Bibles to sell, but his moral laxness is revealed when he opens the case to reveal two Bibles, one of which has a hidden
O’connor, Flannery. "Good Country People" The Bedford Introduction To Literature, 5th ed. Ed, Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s,1999. 393-406
In Good Country People, Flannery O’Connor explores the complexities of human behavior and how common stereotypes shape the response that these behaviors receive. The title, Good Country People, suggests this work of fiction will tell a tale of modest people living in the countryside as they display neighborly etiquette by performing a series of good deeds for one another. The expectation is that the characters will set an admirable example of how one should conduct his or her life, and thus challenge the reader to embark on a journey of personal improvement. However, this is not a tale of such inspiration, instead it presents characters whose lives (and actions) are quite complicated. None of the characters can be classified exclusively
O’Connor, Flannery. "Good Country People.” The Story and Its Writer. Charters, Ann. Compact 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/ST. Martin's, 2011. 662-676. Print.
For instance, the grandmother continuously mentions the word “good man” as a connotation to represent someone with the same beliefs as her. She discloses to the Misfit that she “knows [he] [is] a good man [and] [he] [does] [not] look a bit like [he] [has] common blood” (“AGMIHTF” 7). The grandmother does not only view herself to be a good Christian lady, she also believes in the Southern pure blood concept in which people are considered “good” based on their ancestry. Alternatively, the conceited Hulga witnesses situational irony through her encounter with the fraudulent Manley Pointer and his deceitful plan. Before their encounter, Hulga “had imagined that she seduced him” (“GCP” 284) when in reality she is the one that fell victim to his cynical mind. She is blinded by her own egotistical mindset that it takes this insidious bible sales man to reveal her true naïve, ignorant, and inferior demeanor. Moreover, O’Connor uses symbolism and irony to convey to Mrs. Turpin’s that she is not superior to others simply based on the privileges she is born with. To Mrs. Turpin’s dismay, Mary Grace ironically “single[s] out [and calls her a warthog from hell], though there [is] trash in the room to whom it might justly been applied” (“GCP” 24). The conceited Ruby Turpin is confronted by her hypocrisy and evil by Mary Grace who represents a message from God to
“We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation (“Judge Quotes” 1).” In the book, Good Country People, the author, Flannery O'Connor, uses the text to relay the message that people should never judge a book by its’ cover. This is evident through Mrs. Freeman, Hulga, and Manley Pointer. Mrs. Freeman misjudged Manley as a good country person based on that he sold bibles for a living. Hulga has a reputation of a well educated women. This is proved wrong once she meets Manley Pointer. Manley seems like a good, young man selling bibles for a living, but after Hulga’s date with him, everyone is proven wrong.
In "Good Country People," Flannery O'Connor skillfully presents a story from a third-person point of view, in which the protagonist, Joy-Hulga, believes that she is not one of those good country people. Joy is an intelligent and educated but emotionally troubled young woman, struggling to live in a farm environment deep in the countryside of the southeast United States, where she feels that she does not belong. Considering herself intellectually superior to the story's other characters, she experiences an epiphany that may lead her to reconsider her assumptions. Her experience marks a personal transition for her and constitutes the story's theme--the passage from naïveté to knowledge.
In most of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories a number of characters have a hard time seeing an ultimate reality in their life. They tend to have a distorted grasp on reality but not all in the same way. In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” the Misfit and the Grandmother are prime examples. The actions and the way of life of the Misfit and Grandmother are mostly due to the fact that they are living in an false reality where they are in their own little world, where in the Misfit’s world everything goes with no worry of repercussion in the Grandmother’s case she can do no wrong because she has a false perception of what is right.
The story “Good Country People”, by Flannery O’Conner is a work that uses characterization in a new and interesting way to help shape and present the characters of this story. One of the main characters is Hulga Hopewell, also known as Joy Hopewell. This characters name plays a very ironic role in the story. Through the use of such a peculiar name O’Conner helps to develop and build the characteristics of Hulga. In the story “Good Country People” the use of the name Hulga (Joy) Hopewell helps to further build upon the characterization of Hulga and give the reader a deeper understanding of the character.
Most of Flannery O'Connor's stories seem to contain the same elements: satirical and regional humor, references to God and Christianity, violent similes and metaphors, lots of stereotypical characters, grotesque humor and often focuses a lot of description on character's clothes and faces. However, one of the most important elements of O'Connor's "Good Country People" is the relevance of names. Her choice of names seem to give indications about the personalities of the characters and seem to be more relevant to the story than what the reader would commonly overlook as simply being stock character names. Mrs. Hopewell losing her "joy" (both her daughter and her happiness) and the Bible salesman's own attempt to satisfy his own "manly pointer" proves to the reader that, by coincidence or not, the names of "Good Country People" are indeed very well selected.
...ated and had a Ph.D. in Philosophy. She could not call her daughter a schoolteacher, a nurse, or a chemical engineer and that bothered her. These people and episodes in Joy's life made her a very miserable person. They made her hate all that surrounded her, which included flowers, animals, and young men. This is why Joy changes her name to Hulga when she was twenty-one years old. She believed the name represented her as an individual. The name was fierce, strong, and determined just like her. The name reminded her of the broad, blank hull of a battleship. Joy felt the name reflected her inside and out. It separated her from the people who surrounded her that she hated the most.