Oct 14, 2008

Good Country People | Critical Overview

Flannery O’Connor commented a good deal on her own work, explaining that she belongs “to that literary generation whose education was in the hands of the New Critics” who valued showing over telling. This, says Susanne Morrow Paulson (1988), might account for the difficulty in interpreting her work, for in general it lacks a narrator to reflect on or explain the ideas or characters in the story.

Early reception of O’Connor’s work shows this difficulty; A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which includes “Good Country People,” faced a rather hostile audience. For example,...