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

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

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’