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The Character of Hulga in Good Country People by Mary Flannery O'Connor
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).
In the story she is very rude to her mother. She would yell at her mother and tell her to look inside herself and see exactly what she was, which she believed was nothing. The story speaks of her entering rooms with her wooden leg making a hulking sound. In all she was miserable to be around and when she made an entrance it was one of the most disturbing ones of all. Joy also hated any living thing, which included animals, flowers, and especially young men. The only thing that ever made Joy happy in her life was when she went to school and acquired her Ph.D. in philosophy. Because she was older, she had no real reason to go back to school, so she was stuck with nothing to bring her pleasure or personal enrichment. When Joy was twenty-one and away from home she had her name legally changed. She tried to find the most horrible sounding syllables to put together and she thought of the name Hulga....
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...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.
Works Cited
O'Connor, Flannery. Good Country People. Literature an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, And Drama. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Longman. 2002. (247-261)
O'Connor, Flannery. "Good Country People." Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. Robert DiYanni. 5th ed. New York, NY: McGraw, 2002. 181-194.
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,
O’Conner, Flannery. “Good Country People.” Literature An Introduction To Fiction, Poetry, And Drama. Eds. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia 3rd ed. New York Longman, 2003. 247-261
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
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.
Hulga has been to college for many years, earning a Ph.D. in Philosophy. Coming from such a rural background, she feels that her education raises her status in the intellectual world, and therefore life in general, above anyone not as educated as she is. "You poor baby…it’s just as well you don’t understand"(404). The young woman fails to see that there is much more to life than what you can learn in a book. Due to a heart condition, however, Hulga is forced to remain home on the farm, instead of being in an academic setting where her education would be recognized and encouraged. This attitude that she is above most other people isolates Hulga from everyone around her. Even her mother c...
The ironic quality of each character’s name is apparent immediately. Joy Hopewell, a woman crippled in a gruesome hunting accident, is depicted as bitter, sullen, and nihilistic. She is anything but well-whishing or Joyful. Her mother named her daughter because she expected her ch...
"A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor is a short story that depicts a family's vacation to Florida that turned into an abysmal tragedy when they met with the Misfit, a convict who escaped from prison. This story is meant to be interpreted as a parable, whereby O'Connor made skilful use of symbolism to bring about messages such as the class-consciousness and the lack of spiritual faith that exist amongst human.
Hopewell’s hopefulness works against her good will. Her optimism leads her to only see the good in people and situations. Mrs. Hopewell’s simplemindedness foreshadows her daughter’s defeat to Manley’s manipulative skills. From the beginning of the story, Mrs. Hopewell coins the phrase, “good country people.” This quote proves that Mrs. Hopewell forms superficial stereotypes of certain types of people. She assumes that all country people are good people. Manley’s devout Christian, country boy act easily fools Mrs. Hopewell. She believes he is a great person because he appears to be religious and country. Though Mrs. Hopewell’s always seems to have good intentions with her daughter, Mrs. Hopewell inflicts her views of country people on her daughter, which leads to her daughter’s blindness from reality. Mrs. Freeman, the Hopewell’s family helper, plays a very small, yet important role in Flannery O’Connor’s story. Contrary to how Mrs. Hopewell’s name corresponds with her personality, Mrs. Freeman’s name differs from her actuality. Mrs. Freeman’s name implies that she is free from control, but she works for another family as if she is
Perkins George, Barbara. The American Tradition in Literature, 12th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
most of their income in the city also due to the high demand for rural
... her with joy this sense is only experienced while being confined in her bedroom. And as soon as she leaves her room, the freedom she’d just begun to understand is now taken away from her in an instant. She actually died of sorrow and great disappointment of her husband’s return as he waited at the front door.
Purity and Civility in The Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus and Of Cannibals by Michel de Montaigne
In conclusion, it was no surprise when Mrs. Mallard is shocked when her husband is standing at their front door. He had missed his train; therefore, sparing his life. When she is making her symbolic descent down the stairs, she spots her husband and realizes that she can never reverse her progress. The “joy” that kills her is the joy that she refuses to surrender, but for one hour she gets glimpse of what true joy is (Jamil 219).
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. Literature: an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. Print.