“Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor, was published in 1955. The genre of the story is southern gothic. Gothic tales are usually creepy and take place in a small or enclosed place, like the barn loft where most of the action in the story takes place (Shmoop Editorial Team). Another key element that makes this story gothic is the missing leg and missing glass eye. The reason the story is southern gothic and not just gothic is because the setting takes place in the south. Half of the setting takes place in the kitchen making it clear that the story is from Hulga and Mrs. Hopewell’s point of view. The climatic action takes place in the barn loft emphasizing Hulga’s vulnerability. “Good Country People” describes identity, society and class, …show more content…
He states “I want to devote my life to Chrustian service. ‘ I got this heart condition. I may not live long’” (O’Connor 388). Pointer states this because he is trying to make a connection with Hulga. The doctors told Mrs. Hopewell that Hulga might not make it to see 45 because of her weak heart (O’Connor 386). Pointer lied about having a heart problem so that Mrs. Hopewell would have sympathy and ask him to stay for dinner, which worked (Shmoop Editorial Team). Manley knows how to control a situation and get what he wants. First, he charms Mrs. Hopewell by stating that her friends say she is a “good woman” (O’Connor 387) than states “people like you don’t like to fool with country people like me!” (O’Connor 388) making Mrs. Hopewell insist that he stay for dinner. Second, he charms Hulga by complimenting her repetitively with statements such as “‘I see you have a wooden leg…I think you’re brave. I think you’re real sweet’” and “‘I like girls that wear glasses…I’m not like these people that a serious thought don’t ever enter their heads. It’s because I may die’” whereas than she states, “‘I may die too’” (O’Connor 392). He uses this as a pick up line to get Hulga interested in him but also get her to trust him. Afterwards, he makes the comment “‘don’t you think some people was meant to meet on account of what all they got in common and all?’” (O’Connor 392). These comments and remarks are what get Pointer to get Hulga to meet him on Saturday and go for a walk in the
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.
When an individual has to do a compare and contrast for a short story in the realm of literature, I believe that you have to take into account the deeper meaning in a short story. You have to read between the lines, one has to know what the symbols and what metaphors are. “A symbol is something that has a literal identity, but also stands for something else—something abstract—like an idea, a belief, or an emotion. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between one object and another that is different from it.” (Clugston, 2014) The reader needs to know that the author is using figurative language in the short story. Once the individual can understand this, the literature work will be significantly easier to do a compare and contrast essay.
When I think of the south, I think of southern hospitality. I picture people always talking to each other, whether it?s just small talk or gossip, which is the case in The Petrified Man. The dialogue itself appears to be pretty accurate (from what I can imagine anyway, since I?ve never been down south). The south definitely has a certain way of talking and Eudora Welty does a great job showing us, not just telling us, this dialect. From the very first sentence of the story, you know where you are, and the type of people involved in the story. ?Reach in my purse and git me a cigarette without no powder in it if you kin, Mrs. Fletcher, honey ? I don?t like no perfumed cigarettes.?
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 tell her if she could not come pleasantly than for her to not come at all. (O'Connor 249).
Do you know what American Individualism means? Are you an individualist? Discussing these issues and topics are very important because individualism or collectivism is a lifestyle and depends directly how you look at it. American Individualism is a key term used today in our society. Today, people are turning individualism into collectivism, yet trying to hold on to both at the same time. Depending on who you are and what you believe, you will have your own idea on the positives and negatives of individualism, and where you stand. Despite the fact of the good and bad in American Individualism, without the freedom of standing alone, we are nothing.
The first name Manley, might suggest to the reader that he will fill a male void for Hulga. The reader is told that Mr. and Mrs. Hopewell are devoiced and there is no other mention of her father in the story. Also, the fact that Hugla sees herself as being hideous suggest that she probably doesn’t have many if any male suiters. While the last name Pointer, could suggest that he will most likely reveal, or point out something in Hugla’s life. Manley is a skilled conman and is able to trick both Mrs. Hopewell, who believes that he is good christian and Hulga, who thinks she is to smart to be fooled by anyone. At the end of the story the reader learns that not only is Manley not a bible salesman, but that his name isn’t even Pointer. “You needn’t to think you’ll catch me because Pointer ain’t really my name. I use a different name at every house I call”(O’Connor 1644). He then goes on to say to Hulga “ you ain’t that smart”(O’Connor 1644). Manley had tricked Hulga into thinking that he was a good Christian and that he was interested in her sexually, but really what he wanted was her false leg and some might also suggest to humiliate her.
Grant Wood’s American Gothic is one of the most famous paintings in the history of American art. The painting brought Wood almost instant fame after being exhibited for the first time at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1930. It is probably the most reproduced and parodied works of art, and has become a staple within American pop-culture. The portrait of what appears to be a couple, standing solemnly in front of their mid-western home seems to be a simplistic representation of rural America. As simple as it sounds, when looking deeper into this image, it reveals something much more complex.
The term “Gothic” was coined by Italian Renaissance writers who blamed what they considered to be the non-classical ugliness of the art and architecture of the time, to the northern tribes of Germanic barbarians known as Goths. Baron Wolfgang van Schreck’s ancestors had invaded the Roman Empire and destroyed what was considered to be the “true” art of the time; walls that were much too high and thick, arches that were too steeply pointed. The Gothic school of architecture, which included flying buttresses, rib vaulting, pointed arches and the presence of gargoyles on the inside and outside of the building. At the end of the 18th century the term Gothic switched meanings, from “medieval” to “macabre”, through the intervention of a man named Horace Walpole (1717-1797). He was the son of the famous politician Sir Robert Walpole, Horace was a well-known writer and dilettante who gradually transformed his villa, Strawberry Hill, into the most famous Gothic building of age. With this the now cliché image of a Gothic castle is now an accurate representation of the non-classical ugliness of the time period itself.
Because of Winn Dixie written by Kate DiCamillo, was first published in 2000. This story doesn't say when it occurs. The story is told in first person observer as told by India Opal Buloni. This is a wonderful book that has a good theme
When analyzing a literary work, I often consider the setting of the story to be a vivid picture painted for the reader to understand the story better. However, I have learned recently that the setting not only portrays the environment and surroundings, but it also plays a key role in the development of the plot as well as the characters. Therefore, the setting of a certain story has much more power than most people think. It creates a certain environment, helps characters change, helps them come to realizations, it can even control the way they behave. As I was analyzing the short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper”, I couldn 't help but notice that the setting had a direct influence on not only the main character of the
“In Country” by Bobbie Ann Mason is a story of a teenage girl, named Sam, who had lost her father in Vietnam before she was born, struggles with finding her identity. Sam takes care of her uncle, as her mother leaves to start a new life in Lexington, a few hours away from Hopewell, Kentucky. Sam believes her mother is wrong on leaving Emmett, a mentally ill veteran to fend for himself. Sam lets her mother leave and stays behind to look after him. The two of them have a unique bond. Though the pair together is happy, Emmett seems discontent with his life. He avoids social interactions, and just seems a bit out of his mind so to speak. It's as if he is waiting for something to jar him from this long rut he has been in since the war, maybe even before it. He believes himself and everything around him to be a lost cause. In regards to his house he
...201). In “Crimes of the Heart” specifically, one of the most prominent symbols is food (Whited 3). According to the author Lor Thompson cited in Whited’s piece, hunger, or the desire to consume food, in the play is symbolic of the emptiness that the individual sisters that they try to fill by eating food, but is ineffective, because the emptiness is one of the “heart” and cannot be remedied by filling the stomach (Whited 3). Whited also points out that the act of eating signifies a sense of familial bonding as well, because whenever they are eating, the MaGrath sisters are together, and this often follows major points of realization or events in their life, including the banana splits after the tragedy of their mother’s death and the birthday cake they share as they smile and laugh after coming to their own individual realizations at the end of the play (Whited 3).
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.
American writers have expressed their political and social views through their writing by attempting to establish a voice separate from Britain’s. Their fear of individual and national failure and their thirst for power consumes them and is evident in their writing. Washington Irving and Herman Melville involve the occupation of lawyers and Justices to bring in a patriotic element to influence residents of the young country as a way to share their concerns and inspire ambition. Their usage of metaphors and metonymy subtly convey a message of hope to white residents while, deflating the optimism of the soon to be freed slaves. This essay will prove that a critical reading of Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” and Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” utilizes representations and depictions of the gothic, the portrayal of black characters and their isolation, and blackness suggests the preoccupations of the American writer.
A Vivid Writing How can your feelings affect you while writing? Is it good to express yourself in your writings? Many authors use their writings as a way to free themselves or escape from the real world. An example of this is Charlotte Perkins Gilman who wrote a short story named The Yellow Wallpaper (1892). In this short story, the author used her own experience with her depression after giving birth to share how she feels.