There are many things that factor into reasons for loving someone. Often times when people think of reasons for loving someone, they only think about the immediate motives. People do not consider reasons outside the obvious. However, there are many hidden motives that cause people t love one another. Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” and William Shakespeare’s “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun”, show that love can be influenced by an ulterior motive, through the use of specific word choice and storyline twists.
In Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People”, the Bible salesman’s motive for wanting to get Hulga to fall in love with him was solely to steal her wooden leg. It is originally believed that Pointer likes Hulga for who she is. He is very persistent in trying to get her to love him. Readers are led to believe that Pointer is a Christian because he is going around selling Bibles. It is not until the very end of the story that readers are shown the true character of Manley Pointer.
It is possible that the motive for stealing Hulga’s leg is that Mrs. Freeman hired the Bible salesman to steal the artificial leg from her. “Something about her seemed to fascinate Mrs. Freeman and then one day Hulga realized that it was the artificial leg” (O’connor 436). It is interesting that
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William Shakespeare’s “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun” shows that ulterior motives for love can also refer to personality and non physical features of a person. Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” and William Shakespeare’s “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun”, show that love can be influenced by an ulterior motive, through the use of specific word choice and storyline
They kiss somewhat more and Manley at last takes Hulga 's leg. She gets furious, however Manley declines to return it. He opens up his Bible to uncover it 's holding bourbon and cards; things being what they are he is a trick craftsman and Manley Pointer isn 't his genuine name. Hulga gets angrier with him, yet Manley packs up his stuff and discloses to her that, in spite of her instruction, he, a basic book of scriptures businessperson, figured out how to trick her. He at that point keeps running off with her leg, abandoning her powerless in the
Age doesn’t always resemble or account for the level of maturity within ourselves. Instead, our choices are limited and reflected from our experiences, substantiating the transformations that originate from the outcomes. For Hulga in, Good Country People, tolerating with her heart condition, in result impacts her personality and consolidates her character and mind to be defensive. This unhealthy responsibility and the implication of her weak heart, serves to show that there is strength absent and necessary for her to deal with betrayal, masked as love. This motif O’Connor utilizes, not only indicates her physical weakness, but further reveals the magnitude of her flaw, as she struggles emotionally and mentally with deception.
The scene in the barn displays the reality of Hulga's beliefs as they explode in front of her. When Hulga discovers Manley's façade, she realizes the evil of nihilism and the damage nihilism incurs. Manley says "What’s the matter with you all of a sudden?” he asked, frowning as he screwed the top on the flask and put it quickly back inside the Bible. “You just a while ago said you didn’t believe in nothing.
Pointer tricked Hulga into believing his innocence by using her naivety and ignorance to the world. Hulga agreed to spend the night with Pointer and eventually she got abused by Pointer. Pointer not only used her naivety, he also used Hulga’s wish for attention to manipulate her. After Pointer took Hulga’s leg, he told her, “you ain’t so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!”
(12). This illustrates how Hulga has had no romantic interactions in her life and is now having her first kiss at the age of 32 with Manley Pointer. Because Pointer was the first person to show interest in Hulga, she allowed herself to be vulnerable to him, and he used that to exploit her. During her childhood and adulthood, she was always looked at with pity and faced judgment and rejection, whether that be her appearance, strength, or attitude by doctors, peers, or her family. In the article, Mrs. Hopewell expresses her pity for Hulga stating “She thought of her [Hulga] still as a child because it tore her heart to think instead of the poor stout girl in her thirties who had never danced a step or had any normal good times.”
At this moment Hulga comes to the realization that Manley Pointer is not all that he seems. Hulga is angry and confused “Her face turned almost purple. “You’re a Christian!” she hissed. ”(9) Hulga is having trouble comprehending how someone she considers to be far beneath her is able to so easily dupe her.
Evana Baggett Sun God Freshman English 28 September 2016 In the short story Good Country People Hulga believes herself to be intellectually superior. The quote “Hulga had learned to tolerate Mrs.Freeman who saved her from talks with her mother.”
“...The hunting accident...the leg had been literally blasted off” (O’Connor 484), this sentence mentioned by the author symbolizes Hulga’s personality, because when something very valuable is taken away from someone and they are aware of it, but are not able to react to it, it could change a person drastically. Hulga could have been a totally different women if she had her leg, that’s why the author decided to give her a wooden leg. In the story the author mentions how Hulga does not care about her appearance at all. When she goes on a date with Manley Pointer she wears a dirty white shirt, applies Vapex as perfume, and never smiles. “...
Not only did Hulga’s wooden leg have a symbolic meaning in the story “Good Country People,” but also the imagery of her spectacles has a symbolic meaning as well. Her glasses symbolically represent the loss of vision and gaining of insight. At the beginning of the story, Hulga is wearing these glasses, which many of us tend to associate with being smart. However she does not gain insight until Manley removes her glasses. It is stated in “Good Country People”, “When her glasses got in his way, he took them off of her and slipped them into his pocket” (O’Conner 1350).
She would not use it. She continued to call her Joy to which the girl responded but in a purely mechanical way.” (O’Connor 222) The chasm between Hulga and her mother made Hulga to withdraw from establishing a good meaningful family relationship with her mother, and end up attached to a guy, Manley Pointer, really quickly later. Manley Pointer, the guy with important role as his name implies that he is going to “point” out something to change Hulga’s
She uses the term good country people and “nice young men” (page 3) as insults to keep those types of people at arm’s length due to her insecurity; Manly Pointer could be described by both of those terms. When Hulga’s mother calls Manly the salt of the earth as a reference to him being a good country person she makes a rude remark about getting “rid of the salt of the earth” (page 4) so she could eat. Then during the meal she ignored him because she doesn’t believe that he is worth her time, but still observes “sideways how he handled his knife and fork” (page 5) like he is a science experiment and she is recording her data not observing him as a person of equal stature. All of these actions show the reader that Hugla does not partake in real life but prefers her make believe land where all of her assumptions are right before interacting with anyone or anything. When she does this to Manly Pointer it allows him to figure out what he needs to be to contribute to her needs without her getting in the
Hulga thinks that she will benefit from this and imagines that “she very easy seduced him” (376). Hulga doesn’t realize that Manley is not interested in her, but her wooden leg instead. Hulga never realizes that he wants to steal her leg because he is covering himself up as a good country person. At the barn, Manley is finally able to steal Hulga’s leg. When they at the barn, he seduces her first and begs Hulga to confess her love for him.
Each and every day, people make sacrifices for their loved ones. Maybe they choose to get up earlier in order to do chores or miss an important meeting so that they would have time for each other. There is no greater example of sacrifices for loved ones than in Romeo and Juliet however, where Shakespeare explores two star-crossed lovers, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, who come from two families that have a deep hatred towards each other. The pair meet each other, secretly wed, and then in order to stay together, commit suicide out of despair and distress. Through Romeo and Juliet’s acts of defiance and sacrifice, Shakespeare proves that while hate has the power to destroy and kill, love is even more powerful as it has the power to transform.
Despite popular opinion, love at first sight does not exist. The idea of “love” is widely misinterpreted as a mere attraction between two individuals. However, many do not understand that love goes much further than this, and what follows is a common misconception between love and lust. Shakespeare in his 17th century play Twelfth Night delves deeper into this idea of love. He presents the character Duke Orsino who appear to be infatuated and love-sick for the Countess Olivia, a woman with which he knows little about.
Shakespeare’s novel “Macbeth” demonstrates the many ways in which love can factor into a play. Through the connections built between characters, and the relationship Macbeth holds with power, the ways in which love are perceived through “Macbeth” are evident. In Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth,” there is a strong relationship between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, the relationship between the two characters is known as the most obvious - yet this relationship challenges traditional perceptions of love. The attitude Lady Macbeth and Macbeth have towards each other constantly changes, thus making it hard to form a clear-cut opinion of their relationship.