Analysis of Flannery OConnors Good Country People - Essay Example

Good Country People. Flannery O’Connor’s short story, Good Country People, centers round an educated, disabled young woman, Joy/Hulga, living with her widowed mother, Mrs. Hopewell, on a farm. As is characteristic of many of O’Connor’s stories, the protagonist appears to be self-opinionated and shows an exaggerated self-assurance and posture of social and intellectual superiority. She is taken in by a duplicitous Bible salesman, Manley Pointer, who cheats her and makes a fool of her. Joy/Hulga’s false attitude of superiority is actually a self-built cocoon of isolation, which camouflages her fear of life: Pointer’s violation is her salvation as it breaks open her cocoon and forces her to live. Joy/Hulga’s intellectual superiority is only a convenient device which she uses to isolate herself from the real world. She uses her doctorate in Philosophy as a justification for considering herself to be intellectually superior. She makes it clear that she despises the circumstances of her life and would be “far from these red hills and good county people” (O’Connor, 18), if it wasn’t for her weak heart. In her opinion, the intellectual environment of a university would suit her abilities. However, her attitude is so exaggerated that it is evident that she is merely using her disabilities as an excuse to avoid any risk of failure in the real world. She does not make the least attempt to live the life she feels she is suited to and is content to remain a passive spectator, scorning her everyday world. She utilizes her doctorate, her artificial leg and her heart condition as reasons for her “self-chosen misery” (Garbett, Para 1) Every aspect of Joy/Hulga’s personality is deliberately contrived to strengthen her defensive walls and discourage anyone from attempting to get close to her. “Hulga is the master of the Wall, which she uses to protect herself from the world” (Chris. Rubas Web site. Para 12). Her physical posture of “standing square and rigid-shouldered with her neck thrust slightly forward” (O’Connor, 12), is aggressive and discourages anyone from approaching her. She deliberately dresses in sloppy clothes, going about all day in an old skirt and a faded sweat-shirt, as an apparent symbol of her defiance, which is actually another device to repulse people. She is “bloated, rude and squint-eyed” (O’Connor, 18), again an attempt to discourage all interpersonal relationships. She looks “at nice young men as if she could smell their stupidity.” She keeps herself apart from everyone and spends all her time sitting “on her neck in a deep chair, reading” (O’Connor, 18). She goes on solitary walks and doesn’t like “dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men” (O’Connor, 18). In short, she adopts an attitude that loudly announces that she hates everyone and everything: an attitude that proclaims, ‘KEEP OFF!’ Joy/Hulga affects to despise the ‘good country people’ she is surrounded by, only to further isolate herself from her surroundings. She contemptuously refers to Mrs. Freeman’s daughters, Glynese and Carramae, as ‘Glycerin’ and ‘Caramel,’ and just manages to tolerate Mrs. Freeman. (O’Connor,18). In truth, she is using this apparent scorn to shun interpersonal relationships. She uses people to divert attention away from herself: “Even Glynese and Carramae were useful when they occupied attention that might otherwise have been directed at her” (O’Connor, 15). She uses this ploy to avoid any communication about her encounter at the gate with Pointer and plies Mrs. Freeman with questions about her daughters so that she is not left in an intimate situation with her mother. She has chosen the name, ‘Hulga,’ “purely on the basis of its’ ugly sound” (O’Connor, 16) as yet another device to chase people away. She is disturbed and irritated by Mrs. Freeman’s deliberate use of the name and “would scowl and redden as if her privacy had been intruded upon” (O’Connor, 16). She is afraid that Mrs. Freeman’s speculative gaze and use of the foreboding name are attempts “to penetrate far behind her face and reach some secret fact” (O’Conor, 16). Her disdain is only a pretense which hides her fear of people and is exposed as such when she pleads with Manley Pointer, “Aren’t you just good country people?” revealing that, like her mother, she too “defines good country people as people who are friendly, outgoing, simple and honest” (Sipe, Page 3, Para 1). Joy/Hulga builds particularly strong barriers between herself and her mother, as the person closest to her and the one most likely to penetrate her defenses. She employs many small tactics as her instruments of repulsion. She slams doors, locks herself into her room, is deliberately rude, dresses sloppily and is quick to criticize her mother. She refuses to even walk over the fields with Mrs. Hopewell, resorting to ugly remarks and gloomy expressions to put her off. She uses Mrs. Freeman to avoid time alone in her mother’s company. She deliberately exaggerates the stumping of her leg, although “she could walk without making that awful noise” (O’Connor, 17), because the ugly sound irritates her mother. She changes her name to further alienate her mother. Mrs. Hopewell reaction towards the name ‘Hulga’ as “the ugliest name in any language,” which reminds her “of the broad, blank hull of a battleship” (O’Connor, 14), is considered a triumph by Joy. She wants her mother “to order their lives in accordance with her (Joy’s) view of the world” (Ruppersburg, Para 3). She imposes her atheism, which is contrary to her mother’s beliefs, on Mrs. Hopewell by forbidding her to keep her Bible in the parlor. She uses her avowed philosophies of atheism and nihilism to intimidate her mother and frighten her away from her attempts to forge closer bonds with her daughter, whose rudeness Mrs. Hopewell continues to excuse out of compassion for her disabilities. The lines Joy/Hulga has underlined in her book in blue pencil, are from Nietzsche, who advocated atheism over Christianity (Colas, Para 4). These lines “worked on Mrs. Hopewell like some evil incantation in gibberish” (O’Connor, 19) and have the desired effect of making her run away. Similarly, Mrs. Hopewell’s simple remark about a smile leads to a violent outburst from her daughter: “Woman! Do you ever look inside?” (O’Connor, 18). Joy/Hulga strives to exhibit “the extreme pessimism and radical skepticism” associated with nihilism (Sparrow, footnote 4). She is not a true nihilist, “as she does believe in basic virtues such as honesty and fair dealing” (Jordan, Page 7, Para 2), as seen in her reaction to Pointer’s duplicity. Both her atheism and nihilism are waved before her mother so obtrusively that they are revealed as pretentious and only draw attention to the “narrow, limited, insular and provincial” traits of her character (Jordan, Page 8). They are obviously tools to repel and keep her mother at a comfortable distance. Her vulnerable hidden self sometimes peeps out, as in the plea “If you want me, here I am – AS I AM” (O’Connor, 12). Joy/Hulga’s starts out by using her attitude of patronizing superiority towards Manley Pointer as her usual instrument to defend her safe isolation. She jeeringly refers to him as “the salt of the earth” (O’Connor, 42). She pointedly ignores him during dinner, treating him with deliberate rudeness and lack of courtesy. However, this attitude is exposed for the pretense it actually is, by her eavesdropping on his conversation with her mother “through the crack in the door” (O’Connor, 46) and her sly observation of his table manners. Although she rebuffs him by standing “blank and solid and silent” before him, looking at him “stonily,” and speaking to him “in a flat voice,” (O’Connor, 79, 74, 77), she is not as indifferent as she pretends to be to their date: “She had thought about it half the night” (O’Connor, 72). She dabs some vapex on her collar, as she has no perfume. Joy/Hulga’s safe cocoon is broken forcibly by Manley Pointer due to his unerring identification of the core of her sensitivity: her artificial leg. It has never been touched by anyone except herself. “She took care of it as someone else would his soul” (O’Connor, 123). Pointer’s perceptive declaration, that it is her leg which makes her different from everybody else, breaks the barriers which she has built round herself. She is moved, emotionally and mentally. She thinks that it is Pointer’s wisdom, born of his innocence, which has identified this truth about her. She finds herself, “surrendering to him completely” (O’Connor, 127) and fantasizes about eloping with him. All her self-constructed, protective walls of intellectual superiority come tumbling down: “for the first time, her brain seemed to have stopped working” (O’Connor, 132). And then comes the moment of revelation, “when she is brought face to face with the evil personification of her world view” (Colas, Para 1). After appropriating her artificial leg and reducing her to dependence and helplessness, Pointer shows her his evil character. He throws her own professed philosophy, which she considered him too simple to understand, back in her face after her humiliation: “I been believing in nothing ever since I been born” (O’Connor, 142). For Joy/Hulga, “the moment of violence is the moment of truth” (Chris, Rubas Web site, Para1). The violence here is Pointer’s forcible removal of Hulga’s prosthetic leg and is symbolic of her violation. “The leg is Hulga’s one unprotected part, emotionally and physically” (Chris, Rubas Web site, Para14) and by removing it, Pointer demolishes her world of isolation. She has been cheated by someone she considered her inferior in every way. It is she who is the pitied innocent. Her illusion of nihilism is shattered by Pointer and she sees that “her faith in Science and disbelief in God provide her with little protection” (Bence, Para 10) from someone who has no moral principles. She loses her faith and her certainties and is forced to confront the falseness of her superior attitude. Although Joy/Hulga is cheated by Pointer, by allowing him to breach her defenses, she has ‘lived,’ and broken free from the cocoon of her isolation. “We see that the hopelessness of her physical condition is actually the basis of hope for the salvation of her soul” (Heideman, Para 11). Without this encounter, she may have plodded on for the rest of her life, “in her self-deception and self-righteousness and pettiness until (her) bitterness just grinds to a close.” Pointer comes as an unintended instrument of “dark grace,” which “turns (her) inside out” (Jones, Para 26). We are justified in hoping that the humbling of Hulga’s pride may serve a healing experience and make her “go back to being happy when people call her by her given name, Joy” (Sparrow, last line). There is now hope of a real life ahead of her. Works Cited. Bence, Clayton. Religion in the works of Flannery O’Connor. 9 April, 2007. < http://www.aug.edu/fenglish/choice_voice/essays/flannery.htm > Colas, Brandon. October 2006. Flannery O’Connor. Good Country People. Nihilist Hypocrites. 9 April 2007. < http://www.literature-study-online.com/essays/oconnor.html > Chris. 2000. Rubas Web page. Flannery O’Connor Rocks! 9 April 2007. < http://www.rubas.com/write/flan.html > Garbett, Ann Davison. Flannery O’Connor. Magill’s Survey of American Literature. 9 April 2007. < http://salempress.com/Store/samples/survey_american_lit/survey_american_lit_ Flannery.htm > Heideman, Destiny. O’Connor’s Bitter-Wise Humor. Watermarks. 9 April 2007. < http://www.llp.armstrong.edu/watermarks4/dh.html > Jones, Douglas. Who’s Afraid of Flannery O’Connor? Credenda Agenda Web site. Back Issues. Volume 18, Issue 2: Thema. 9 April 2007. < http://www.credenda.org/issues/18-2thema.php > Jordan, Michael M. 2005. Flannery O’Connor’s Writing: a guide for the perplexed. Find Articles Web site. 9 April 2007. < http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0354/is_1_47/ai_n13665866/pg_1 > Ruppersburg, Hugh. 22 January 2004. Flannery O’Connor’s Short Fiction. The New Georgia Encyclopedia. University of Georgia. 9 April 2007. < http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2470 > Sipe, Corey. 2 September 2006. ‘Cathedral’ by Raymond Carver and ‘Good Country People’ by Flannery O’Connor. Interpretive Analysis of Short Stories. Associated Content Web site. 9 April 2007. < http://www.assiciatedcontent.com/article/56116/cathedral_by_raymond_carver_good_ country.html > Sparrow, Stephen. 2 November 2002. Stamping Out Joy. The Fallacy of Certainty in Good Country People. Comforts of Home Web site. The Flannery O’Connor Repository. 9 April 2007. < http://mediaspecialist.org/ssstamping.html > Read More