Irony In Flannery O Connor's Good Country People

From the 19th centuries until now, American society is no longer fully committed to Christian beliefs, and many other new ideals have become adopted and more popular. People are so confused with many different beliefs mixing together in the new world, where the good and evil is just separated by a thin line of justice. People are unable to clearly see the truth anymore, but instead they try their best to see through the deceptive web of hypocrite and make assumptions using their limited knowledge and experiences. Flannery O’ Connor was born in 1925 and grew up seeing the challenge and difficulty American people face on the way to seek real goodness. Even at a very young age, O’ Connor had a very correct and wise point of view about her society

at that time. She published one of the best short stories of all time, “Good Country People” when she was just 30 years old. She surprises and satisfies many readers with her special art of literature. Irony is an important element in “Good Country People”, allowing the characters to become very interesting and guide readers to numerous angles of real life, so after many delicate smiles everyone learns to have a better thinking about others and draws out from the story some valuable moral lesson to perfect his or her lacking soul.
One of the most effective uses of irony in “Good Country People” is situational irony which O’ Connor uses very carefully to make the “angel” of the story hold a fatal shear while hiding the evil under a cassock.

Hulga is introduced as a bitter and angry atheist who thinks she is super intelligent and has a leg up on everyone in the world. The readers somehow still feel pity for her since, after a horrible accident, she lost one of her legs. They may assume because of an abnormal childhood, she grows up in misery and hates others who seem happier than her. Moreover, readers also have sympathy for her because she is above thirty years old and has achieved the highest level of education. Of course, they think she must see through much greater things in life and cannot stand her naive mother and most other people who grow up on the farm in the South and do not even have a chance to finish college. O’Connor writes, "she looked at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity" (576). Then, the readers are so happy when they see a possible savior for Hulga, the Bible salesman. Flannery paints an almost perfect picture of him and covers his real person under many coats of sweetness and sugar. When he is first introduced in the story, he says "I want to devote my life to Chrustian service" (O’Connor 578). He was seen by readers as a simple, innocent and faithful country man who decided to spend his little time left on this earth to focus on becoming a good Christian and

enlightening others through Christ's light.
O’Connor let two completely opposite characters, the Bible salesman and Hulga, meet together in a very short time. However, that quick, fateful meeting unveiled many great secrets about both of them and changed Hulga’s point of view about life forever. When Hulga saw the Bible salesman, just in a moment she already came up with a tricky trap for him. She views him as a foolish child who blindly believes anything others tell him and has no idea what is the real meaning of life. In her dream, she made a perfect plan to seduce him in order to prove to him that Christianity and the whole ideal about good country people is just a lie. "She imagined that she took his remorse in hand and changed it into a deeper understanding of life" (O’Connor 581). She believes herself a strong nihilist and consistent atheist, and that her philosophy is at a much higher level than other religions. However, on the loft in an old barn, the seducer gets seduced and the previously thought nihilist has to confront the real nihilist. This is where the climax and the main situational irony of the story take place. Hulga has never kissed someone before, but she willingly gives up her body to seduce the Bible salesman as a necessary part of her plan. In reality, the Bible salesman had convinced and seduced her to the point that she has to admit that she loves him. O’Connor writes "he caught her to him and wildly planted her face with kisses until she said ‘Yes, yes’” (584). Furthermore, while some readers think that they must have sex on the loft, they really did not. Instead, the Bible salesman took from her one special thing that she never expects to lose in this game of love, her artificial leg. There is one small but sharped irony in this detail that makes the main symbol in the story Hulga’s artificial leg. With other normal women, their most valuable thing may be their beauty, jewelry, or love from their dream man. In contrast, the most valuable and vulnerable thing to Hulga is her artificial leg, "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 584). The artificial leg is what she values more than her body, and it is her untouched virginity. She never shows anyone how she put it on or how she takes it off.
From the beginning until the end, the Bible salesman is the one who really has a leg up on everyone. He knows exactly how to manipulate Hulga and her mother by sharing his background as a country boy and his similar unfortunate weak heart condition with Hulga (O’Connor 578). He very quickly finds out what Hulga’s weakest point and take complete control over her. Now, he not only wins over Hulga by taking away her symbolic virginity, but also pops Hulga’s huge bubble which builds up from her arrogance, anger and nihilism philosophy. Insteads of showing him her great ideas about nihilism, he shows her what is a real nihilist looks and behaves like. He splashed at her face a basket of very cold water by saying to her that he is a nihilist since he was born and never believes in Christianity or and type of morality standard, "I been believing in nothing ever since I was born" (O’Connor 586). That really gives her a big shock and wakes up her negative mind. Right at that moment there is a switch between good and evil. Hulga is a nihilist, but a very soft nihilist since deep in her heart she still desires for something greater than herself. Being trapped alone on the loft with only one leg, she learns a valuable lesson that she may not be the cleverest person in the world and there is more meaning of life than just nothing. So, at the end the readers start to have a hope for Hulga that she will drop her ugly mask and come back to Joy, the little angel, inside her heart.
On the other hand, with the Bible salesman who appears as a model figure for good country people, at the end the readers cannot see any hope in him.

This is not the only time he successfully tricks someone since before he takes Hulga’s artificial leg he already has a woman’s glass eye and many other cruel things in his collection, "I've gotten a lot of interesting things…One time I got a woman's glass eye this way" (O’Connor 586). He is so evil to the point that he does not even care much about money or sex like other robbers do. His enjoyment is spending time to find out the most valuable thing a person has and takes it from them to make them hurt as much as possible. After few times reading and deeply thinking about “Good Country People”, Christian readers may see that Hulga was blessed in a very special way. Hulga had seen a master in nihilism that will raise many questions in her mind. She will wonder if she continues following nihilism until the end she will end up becoming like the Bible salesman. She surely never wants to be like him, so tomorrow is shining for her in many readers’

view.
Life nowadays becomes very complicated since in reality good and evil usually mix really well together. People should not judge others by their appearance or even their real personality since people’s minds can be changed every second. O’Connor had proven to many readers that there is no complete good or evil, but there should be always a chance for people to better and correct themselves. By using many types of irony in “Good Country People”, O’Connor brings an unforgettable smile to the readers that makes them keep asking questions in their head. They start comparing the story with their real life and have sympathy for characters as well as seeing themselves in the story. As the result, in one unexpected second, they will smile again when they see the truth is so strange and step forward on the way to perfect themselves by recognizing their own mistakes that if they do not see by themselves they will never admit it when someone is around to tell them.