Good Country People (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Flannery O’Connor
- First Published: 1955
- Type of Plot: Realism
- Time of Work: The late 1950's
- Setting: A small southern town
- Principal Characters: Mrs. Hopewell, Hulga Hopewell, Manley Pointer, Mrs. Freeman
- Genres: Psychological fiction, Short fiction
- Subjects: Self-discovery, Philosophy or philosophers, Farms, farmers, or farming, Christianity, Small-town life, Amputation, amputees, or prosthetics, Bible, biblical imagery, or biblical symbolism, Hallucinations or illusions
- Locales: South (U.S.)
The Story
Mrs. Hopewell, a widowed farm owner, is in the practice of hiring tenant farm families to assist her in maintaining the farm. Her current helpers, the Freemans, are busybodies, but they are reliable and serve her better than the previous tenants. Mrs. Hopewell regards Mrs. Freeman and her family as “good country people” and is fond of uttering homespun maxims such as “Nothing is perfect” or “That is life!” and being reassured by Mrs. Freeman's frequent rejoinder, “I always said so myself.”
The backward, unsophisticated ways of the Freemans,...
[The entire page is 1223 words long]
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