Good Country People By Flannery O Connor

Journey to Salvation

How does one define the concept of being a good person? In the short story, “Good Country People”, written by Flannery O’Connor, readers are captivated by this concept through the usage of symbolism and theme. O’Connor centers her story on the sense of leading a Christian, devoutly religious life, and describes how people assume that makes them worthy of salvation. By contrasting mindless chatter about “good country people” with questions about the true meaning of religious faith, readers are walked through a progression of development in the main character, Hulga. This development is highlighted by O’Connor’s correlations made between the realistic and the symbolic. O’Connor also utilizes the technique of epiphany, where

a single moment of illumination “awakens” Hulga, ultimately revealing the deeper meanings of the text.
Within the story, Hulga is the multi-dimensional main character that goes through a complete change. The start of this metamorphism takes place when she changes her name to Hulga, an “ugly” name, which inadvertently reflects her feelings about her injured body and self. This new name also opposes her real name “Joy”. Joy was conscious even though terribly injured as a child when “her leg was blasted off”, and this indicates that Joy seems to have rejected her own body by choosing a life of intelligence and of the mind. Along with her missing limb, Hulga’s “weak heart” serves as a symbolic as well as literal affliction. Hulga hardens her heart just as she rejects her body. Mrs. Hopewell, Hulga’s mother, is convinced that Hulga would have “been better without a useless PhD. degree in philosophy”, (O’Connor, p. 666), and has no comprehension of the one true meaning of life to her daughter: “Such is after all the strictly scientific approach to Nothing. We know it by wishing to know nothing of Nothing,” (O’Connor, p. 666). This is a reference to nihilistic philosophy, which denies the existence of any basis for truth. It rejects belief in concepts such as religion and morality, and generally recognizes no authority.
Due to Mrs. Hopewell's failure to understand Hulga, Hulga withdraws; deciding not to attempt any meaningful relationship with her mother. Readers witness this withdrawal in a scene in which her mother has just uttered a series of her favorite, constant platitudes, and O'Connor then depicts Hulga's eyes. Hulga's eyes, she says, are "icy blue, with the look of someone who has achieved blindness by an act of will and means to keep it," (O’Connor, p. 663). By O'Connor's admission then, Hulga is "blind,". Ironically, it is during one of Hulga's exchanges with her mother, while Hulga is attempting to reveal her mother's own blindness (lack of awareness) to her, that Hulga fails; instead, she reveals a vast weakness in her own proclaimed atheistic views. This lays her open later to the character Manley Pointer’s attack. Mrs. Hopewell had told Hulga, that a smile on her face would improve matters ("a smile never hurt anything"). In a moment of great insight, Hulga lashed out at her mother, yelling, "We are not our own light!", (O’Connor, p. 666). O'Connor is depicting to readers here that Hulga, up until that point, had professed absolute atheism. To Hulga, there is no god and there is no afterlife; man is all. Unconsciously though, it seems Hulga wants to believe that there is a power greater than herself. Subconsciously, she deeply desires something to which she might surrender herself, as she later does to Pointer's advances. Therefore, in pointing out her mother's own "blindness," Hulga has revealed to us that she herself is blind about her own desires and her view of reality.
The character Manley Pointer continues to blur that line, as he could be considered an illusion of appearance versus reality. Pointer is so heavily weighted down by his suitcase that he is lopsided and must “brace himself to prevent collapsing”. This heaviness foreshadows a quality of falsehood that one carries that makes their mind, soul, and body heavy. Yet, people put trust in him, so it seems that misplaced faith in appearances could be a central theme of the story. Appearance and deception conflict with reality and truth, as Pointer assures Mrs. Hopewell that he is like her and can exchange generalizations about “good country people”. Mrs. Hopewell prides herself in not being taken for a fool, but this boy seemed “so sincere, so genuine and earnest.” Everyone thinks Pointer is young, innocent, and wholesome, which leads to Hulga’s fantasy about seducing him and having to deal with his remorse. But, despite her advanced academic degree, Hulga’s misguided thinking is apparent in her fantasy that she will mercilessly seduce the boy.
With that being said, readers are taken to the moment in the hayloft, where Hulga is stripped of her hardness, her nihilism, her pride – all of which are symbolized by her wooden leg. Hulga surrenders to her feelings, drawn to this innocent boy who “had touched the truth about her” (O’Connor, p. 674). She lets him remove what has become for her a kind of symbol of her identity: “she was as sensitive about the artificial leg as a peacock about his tail. No one ever touched it but her. She took care of it as someone else would his soul, in private and almost with her own eyes turned away” (O’Connor, p. 674). Since this is the case, it is not surprising that Pointer's comment that it is her leg which "makes her different" produces the total collapse of Hulga's resolve.
Hulga’s reaction stresses the fact that her decision to surrender the leg is essentially an intellectual one; O'Connor's selection of a well-known biblical piece ("He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it," Matthew 10:39) clearly depicts Hulga's surrender to Pointer. Having made her commitment to Pointer, Hulga allows herself to fantasize about how "she would run away with him and that every night he would take the leg off and every morning put it back on again," (O’Connor, p. 675). By surrendering the leg to Pointer, Hulga feels "entirely dependent on him."
Hulga's epiphany, or moment of grace, occurs because of Pointer's betrayal of her faith in him.

Prior to the betrayal, Hulga considered herself to be intellectually superior to those around her. She relied upon the wisdom of this world to guide her, contrary to warnings that can be found in the Bible, such as, “See to it that no one deceives you by philosophy and vain deceit, according to human traditions, according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ" (Colossians 2:8). However, for Hulga to progress as a character, it is necessary for her to relate to another biblical quote, that "God turned to foolishness the 'wisdom' of this world" (I Corinthians 1:20). From Hulga's point of view, the surrender of her leg was an intellectual decision; consequently, the destruction of her faith in the power of her own intellect can come only through betrayal by the one she decided to believe

in.
Manley Pointer plays this role by removing Hulga's leg and setting it out of her reach. When she asks that he return it, he refuses. When a shocked Hulga questions whether he is "good country people," as he claims he is, Pointer replies, "Yeah . . . but it ain't held me back none. I'm as good as you any day in the week," (O’Connor, p. 675). Defeated, Hulga attempts to use her intellect to shame Pointer into returning the leg. She hisses, "You're a fine Christian! You're just like them all — say one thing and do another," (p. 675) only to hear Pointer tell her that he is not a Christian. Pointer's final comment strips Hulga of her last resource — her feeling of intellectual superiority. "And I'll tell you another thing," Pointer says, "You ain't so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born," (O’Connor, p. 676).
In turn, it is a totally chastened Hulga who turns "her churning face toward the opening" and watches Pointer disappear, a "blue figure struggling successfully over the green speckled lake," (p.676).

The color imagery associated with Pointer as he leaves, combined with the image of walking on the water, seems to indicate that O'Connor wants the reader to view Pointer as an instrument of God's grace for Hulga. Hulga experienced a final moment of crumbling, in which her own nihilistic illusions are all stripped away. There was grace in this devastation, though. As Jonathan Rogers writes in his published spiritual biography of O'Connor (The Terrible Speed of Mercy), “In O'Connor's unique vision, the physical world, even at its seediest and ugliest, is a place where grace still does its work. In fact, it is exactly the place where grace does its work. Truth tells itself here, no matter how loud it has to shout” (Rogers, xviii). This is exemplified by the idea that while Hulga has perhaps been physically and mentally defeated, she is now going to rise and become a new person because of this

experience.
In the final paragraphs of the story, O’Connor makes clear the parallel which she established earlier between Hulga and her mother. Hulga has now undergone mortification. However, she is also the only character "privileged" by enlightenment, which occurs because of how she was victimized by Pointer. Her experience with him in the barn opens her to redemption, for O'Connor points Hulga to God and away from nihilism by causing her to experience a failure with the ideals that are bound to betray her. Ultimately, O’Connor has successfully highlighted the meaning of true religious faith. Through emphasizing that intellect and the way of the world will fail, she brought to life her belief in the necessity of salvation, and the idea that perhaps deep within, everyone has a desire to believe in something more powerful than themselves.