Good Country People Summary

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Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” is a short story about the interactions and relationship between several different characters. The story starts out on a farm with the first three main characters Mrs. Hopewell, Mrs. Freeman, and Joy-Hulga Then one morning, a Bible salesman by the name of Manley Pointer comes to the house and turns Joy-Hulga’s belief in her ability to control her life upside down. Throughout the story, Joy-Hulga sense of perceived intellectual superiority leaves her unaware of her surroundings along with blinding her to social understandings leading the readers to conclude that Joy-Hulga’s education does not necessarily prepare her for real life. The dynamic and round main protagonist Hulga also know as Joy is a thirty-two year old large blond girl that has an artificial leg and a physical heart condition. Joy-Hulga has a rude and ugly attitude, which her mother brushes off …show more content…

When Joy-Hulga was twenty-one and away from home she legally changed her name from Joy to Hulga which she saw as a great accomplishment. She changed her name based on the ugly sound but also that it represented the Vulcan in away; she also just changed her name to spite her mother. Later in the short story Joy-Hulga spends time with Manley Pointer believing that she will be able to teach him a thing are two, but instead Pointer shatters Joy-Hulga’s understanding of people and herself belief by breaks her trust and steals her leg. Manley Pointer shows Joy-Hulga what she really believes in, but the reader doesn’t get to see the effects of her transformative experience will have on her in the story itself. In “Good Country People” it is indisputable that Joy-Hulga believes herself to have a higher sense of intellectual superiority than the simple-minded people around her. Nevertheless from start to finish, Flannery O’Connor slowly breaks down Joy-Hulga’s strong belief that her PhD in Philosophy and perceived intellectual superiority would not necessarily help

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