Ignorance Is Bliss in Flannery O'Connor's Good Country People

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Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" has a steady demonstration of irony, much of it based on the title of the story. Ignorance is also a major issue in the work, both Ms. Freeman and Ms. Hopewell exhibit this clearly. However ironically, Hulga exhibits this with her knowledge. She takes pride in her own intellect and in her knowledge of existentialism. Hulga's existentialist ideas come crashing down because of her naïveté and lack of dependence on others. Hulga believes she is self sustained however she realizes when the bible salesman steals her leg that this isn't so. Hulga's lack of dependence on others may be the cause of her emotional downfall when she realizes that she can't depend solely on herself. Her pride and wisdom as well as her emotions could also be the reason for her gullibility and her being easily manipulated by the young bible salesman.

Hulga always tries to be perceived as being a stern person with an established set of ideas. "I don't have illusions," she says at one point. "I'm one of those people who see through to nothing."(112). Ironically, however, we see that this is false. Manly Pointer, the young bible salesman, easily manipulates Hulga and tricks her into believing that he actually liked her. Manly makes Hulga vulnerable when he asks for her wooden leg. In reality the reader can sense that in asking for the leg, Manly is asking her to submit herself to him body and soul. Hulga does so and thus becomes "entirely dependant on him" (113). Before giving up her leg, however, Hulga would have seen her self as far more superior than Manly on the basis of her being more knowledgeable than him, "She imagined that she took his remorse in hand and changed it into a deeper understanding of life. She to...

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...e even more self-protective, hostile, and antisocial. She might become less willing to trust others, especially those who come across as "good country people." One would hope, however, that Joy will continue to recognize and admit her own naïveté and to make fewer assumptions about the naïveté of others. Throughout the entire story, Hulga holds that she is wise and, therefore, she is better than the good country folk that surround her. However she realizes that she has to depend on others in order for her to survive. Most notably she has to depend on God. Ironically she finds her self depending on those "good country people" that she first perceived to be ignorant while in actuality she was the ignorant one.

Works Cited

O'Connor, Flannery. Good Country People. Literature an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, And Drama. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Longman. 2002.

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