Browse all of the Salem on Literature series

Good Country People (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

In “Good Country People,” Mrs. Hopewell's perennial optimism is balanced by what seems to be her daughter Joy's self-chosen misery. It is characteristic of Joy's attitude that she has changed her name to Hulga, evidently because it is the ugliest name she can think of. In that way, her name matches her faded sweatshirt, her scowl, and her wooden leg (she lost her leg in a hunting accident long before). While her mother is frustrated by her daughter's bad temper, she is equally frustrated by her daughter's Ph.D. in philosophy, a degree which makes her unable easily to identify her daughter's achievement to others. She worries that Hulga never seems to enjoy anything, not even young men.

That makes her concerned when Hulga, an atheist who refuses to let her mother keep a Bible in the parlor, confronts Manley Pointer, a fresh-faced and earnest-seeming Bible salesman who wins Mrs. Hopewell's trusting heart with his brave stories of childhood hardships and religious devotion. Partly as a joke, Hulga agrees to meet Pointer on a picnic. The falsity of their relationship is marked by the thirty-two-year-old Hulga telling Pointer that she is seventeen, while he calls her both brave and sweet. It has occurred to Hulga that she might be able to seduce Pointer.

At the picnic it becomes clear that Pointer has similar ideas and that, in fact, he is far more cynical than Hulga. His hollow Bible contains playing cards, whiskey, and condoms. He is hardly one of the “good country people” of the title. Perhaps that cynicism is what wins enough of Hulga's confidence that she lets him see her wooden leg and even remove it from her, although she feels helpless without it. That is when Pointer announces that he collects things such as glass eyes and wooden legs, marks of his own complete nihilism. “I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!” he exclaims. Hulga is left in the hayloft to think about the real meaning of unbelief.

Suggested Readings

Bloom, Harold. Flannery O’Connor. New York: Chelsea House, 1986.

Brinkmeyer, Robert H. The Art and Vision of Flannery O’Connor. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.

Cash, Jean W. Flannery O'Connor: A Life. University of Tennessee, 2002.

Shloss, Carol. Flannery O’Connor’s Dark Comedies: The Limits of Inference. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.

Walters, Dorothy. Flannery O’Connor. Boston: Twayne, 1973.

Dictionary Tip:

Lookup any word on eNotes with our dictionary. Highlight the word and press SHIFT + D for a definition, or SHIFT + T for a synonym.