Good Country People

"Good country people" is a phrase that is echoed several times throughout this short story, and the connotation is that "country people" are honest, hardworking, and genuine souls who are in high...

The two names represent separate identities residing in the one person. Joy is no longer joyful, having had her life ruined by an accident that caused permanent disability. As far as she's...

The term grotesque in literature refers to writing about the physically or morally ugly, distorted, and repellent. In "Good Country People," O'Connor makes Hulga a grotesque. Hulga has an...

Two of the primary characters in Flannery O'Connor's short story "Good Country People" are Joy Hopewell and Manley Pointer. Joy has renamed herself Hulga, the ugliest name she can think of, and...

Hulga Hopewell has a PhD in philosophy and reads books so abstruse and technical that her mother regards them as "some evil incantation in gibberish." However, she is easily deceived and robbed by...

Flannery O'Connor's short story "Good Country People" examines human nature and blind acceptance (based upon one's similarities with another's ideology). Short stories are broken down into five...

Hulga and Manley are both quite fake people. Both use false names. Both dress strangely. Both have heart conditions which reflect their ill souls. Both planned to seduce one another as part of a...

O'Connor shows Hulga to be limited and blinded by her view that intelligence and education are incompatible with religious faith. Her belief in her own intelligence is a form of pride and...

Manley Pointer evidently has a fetish for objects related to disability, specifically for parts which have been tooled to replace what has been lost. He has a compunction to collect such objects...

The tone of the story is ironic and mocking. As she often does, O'Connor simply gets inside the head of her main character or characters and conveys their thoughts in a deadpan, mocking, scathing...

Mrs. Hopewell's last name represents her optimism, Christian beliefs, and good faith in people. She seems to barely perceive that evil exists in the world or that Manley Pointer is anything but the...

Joy-Hulga has an incredible sense of superiority over everyone around her. She is college educated with a degree in philosophy and that alone makes her different and "better" than her mother Mrs....

This is a critique of a particular type of person who identifies as being Christian. There are many Christians who embody the beliefs of Christ and who demonstrate the Biblical "fruits of the...

Many of the names in this story can be interpreted ironically: for example, Mrs. Hopewell wants to see the good in people, such as Manley, but she tends to allow her sense of her own superiority to...

In Flannery O’Connor’s story, Mrs. Freeman is one of the people that Mrs. Hopewell labels with the title phrase. The author uses the two mothers, their relative social positions, and their...

Hulga Hopewell of "Good Country People" is an unusual character in Flannery O'Connor's fictional world. Hulga Hopewell’s loss of her leg at the age of nine from a gunshot determined her bitter...

Sin is one of the critical themes of Christian teaching, and if we look towards Roman Catholic theology, we can observe the categorization of the seven deadly sins. I'd suggest that, thematically...

Joy's mother suspects that the name Hulga is selected because it is the ugliest name that Joy could find. According to Joy/Hulga this is exactly the case. Joy/Hulga is a somewhat bitter young...

“Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor features two characters who hide behind their names. Joy Hopewell believes that no man will ever be interested in her because she has a prosthetic leg....

The story opens with Mrs. Freeman, Mrs. Hopewell's hired help, wearing a "neutral" expression. She won't reveal herself to others. We learn, too, that Mrs. Hopewell is condescending to Mrs....

I agree that the central conflict in the novel is between Hulga and Pointer Manley. Hulga and Pointer both believe they are superior to the "good country people" all around them. Hulga, who has a...

Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" focuses on the story of a girl named Joy-Hulga Hopewell, who thinks that she is intellectually superior to those around her. Eventually, though, she is...

Manley Pointer is successful in his misadventures of "Good Country People" because he taps into the weaknesses of the people whom he exploits, pretending to commiserate with them on their beliefs....

In "Good Country People," Flannery O'Connor satirizes certain qualities in human nature such as pretension, and she admires "a sense of being" achieved through a redemptive experience. "Foolishness...

In the short story "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor, the characters, particularly Joy, are taught the lesson that their pride in their own knowledge has blinded them to the lessons that...

No, because all the characters are seen to be odd in some way. For example Joy is seen to be very rude and awkward and endowed with a monstrous intellect at the expense of feeling, and given to...

The significance of the title "Good Country runs throughout the story. The title appears all through the story. Yet, each character has faults that demonstrate they are not “good country...

Hulga is Mrs. Hopewell’s only child. She is thirty-two years old and is highly educated. She has a PhD in Philosophy, and most of the villagers find her attitude quite incomprehensible. Mrs....

Country people are supposed to be the salt of the earth: God-fearing people whose innate sense of goodness can always be relied upon. That's the theory, at any rate. And that's certainly the...

Mrs. Hopewell's character does explain her daughter's character to a point. Joy/Hulga, is an angry, resentful individual, who although very smart, does not participate in life according to her...

Set in what Flannery O'Connor called the "Christ-haunted South" her stories find religion as part of several dimensions of the narrative. In "Good Country People" the characters resonate with...

Within "Good Country People," Joy (or Hulga) exhibits a great deal of intellectual pride. She holds the people around her in contempt, viewing herself as their intellectual superior on account of...

Mrs. Hopewell is extremely skilled at manipulation; in fact, having been warned about the nosiness of Mrs. Freeman, she has a plan in place to mange her before she even hires her and her husband as...

You will have to decide what position you would like to take in your thesis, but here are a few ideas. Flannery O'Connor's short story, "Good Country People," focuses on a mother/daughter...

By the time that Pointer steals Hulga's leg and glasses, I think Hulga has lost all illusions of actually taking anything from Pointer. By that point, Hulga has begun to realize exactly how deeply...

Mrs. Hopewell uses this term to describe people who are uncomplicated and uneducated. "Good country people" are characterized also by possessing what Mrs. Hopewell considers good values. This...

One aspect of family that is important appears in the way Hulga interacts with her mother. Because she has an education, she feels that she is far superior to the "country folk" family from which...

By introducing the two older women first in the story, the author allows us an opportunity to understand Mrs. Hopewell's desire for her daughter Joy/Hulga to have a normal happy life. Mrs....

Some common themes that "Petrified Man" and "Good Country People" share are superficiality and predation, among others. In Eudora Welty’s short story “Petrified Man,” superficiality is arguably...

Flannery O'Connor's choice of the title "Good Country People" for her short story about religious small-town people in rural Georgia is considered entirely ironic. As the eNotes biography of...

It would appear as if she sees them as very true to their faith, simplistic, and narrow-minded. This is especially true of Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman. However, Joy, or Hulga, as she prefers,...

The stories are alike in that are part of the American Southern genre of the grotesque, they deal in secrets and hypocrisy, and a character everyone looks down on, Billy in the Welty story and...

Initially, we believe as readers, as do Hulga and Mrs. Hopewell, that Manley Pointer says "Chrustian" because he is a simply an ignorant country hick who has been taught to pronounce it that way....

According to Lois Tyson, "[Marxist critical theory] attempts to reveal the ways in which our socioeconomic system is the ultimate source of our experience." Marxist critical theory often...

The “Good Country People” in Flannery O’Connor’s story include the Freemans. They are a married couple who work for Mrs. Hopewell as tenants on her farm. Mrs. Freeman appears often in the story,...

Situational irony is a literary device in which the outcome of a character's actions or circumstances is the opposite of what is expected. In "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor, this tool...