Each regional area has it’s own stereotypes. The South, or the country, is one of the many regions in the United States that gets stereotyped. When thinking about the people of this region, they are usually described as nice, simple, religious and not well educated. In Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People”, Hulga’s stereotypical view about country people makes her feel superior towards others; however,that backfires when Manley Pointer easily tricks her by acting like a simple and religious person.
Hulga’s judgements of the people around her are heavily based upon her stereotypical view of “good country people”. Hulga applies this stereotype to the Freemans. Hulga thinks of the Freemans as country people because they are simple and not
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Hulga believes that her Ph.D in philosophy makes her more educated than “good country people.” Hulga makes it obvious that she would much rather be with people that understand her concept of nothing instead of simple and dull people. If it weren’t for Hulga’s condition, she would be away from the”red hills” (370) and “in a university lecturing to people who know what she is talking about” (370). This statement shows that Hulga feels stuck in the country and she feels surrounded by people that aren’t well educated to understand her. Hulga wants to surround herself with philosophy instead of people who she feels are not good enough for her. As the story says, “All day Joy sat on her neck in a deep chair, reading” (370). Even if Hulga goes outside, she does not like interacting with nature or other people. Hulga has this mindset that people of the country are not smart enough to understand her philosophy which in fact causes her to isolate herself from the outside world and increases her feeling of superiority. Furthermore, Hula feels that she is more educated than her mother. Hulga’s mother is not able to comprehend Hulga’s situation. Hulga even thinks that her mother is not able to turn Hulga’s “dust into Joy” (369). Her mother still thinks of her as a young child, but Hulga, who is thirty, feels as if she is trapped in a place that is not benefitting her at …show more content…
Hulga doesn’t care about Manley at first because she sees him as another country person. After convincing Mrs. Hopewell that he is a good country person, he catches Hulga’s attention when he lies to them about his chronic disease. He mentions that he has this “heart condition” (372) and he “may not live long” (372). This automatically catches Hulga’s attention because she has the same condition. She gets really excited and even invites him to stay over for dinner (372). Hulga fails to understand that he is lying and only wants her to notice him. After dinner is over, Manley is able to hold a conversation with her. Throughout this conversation, he compliments her such as, “you’re real brave” (375) and “you’re real sweet” (375). He continues to make small talk with her and keeps her attention. Eventually, Manly asks Hulga to hang out with him. 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. Hulga is fooled and thinks that “she easily seduced him without even making up her mind to try” (378). Hulga thinks that she is the
Manley and Hulga choose to go out for a stroll, and in the end they start discussing the idea of life, religion, presence, and God, however for the most part about Hulga 's wooden leg. Manley is extremely inspired by the wooden leg and requests that Hulga let him see it. Hulga, notwithstanding her doctorate in logic, doesn 't have a great deal of involvement with genuine circumstances of a sentimental sort. Manley focuses on this and entices a couple of kisses out of her. They go into the space of the horse shelter to have some protection, and Manley says he adores her.
She is constantly bringing up her childhood and her shyness which gives us information that there is a problem, but we don't know what it is. The author also starts the story off with "Helga Crane felt no regret as the cliff-like towers faded" and she seems very to herself. Though she shows moments of her getting out of her comfort zone and she is distracted by things like a large crowd of people (paragraph 8), her aunt (paragraph 10). She did bring up her aunts husband which could also potentially be a problem stating "A deep pang of misgiving nauseated her at the thought of her aunt's husband, acquired since Helga's childhood visit. Painfully, vividly, she remembered the frightened anger of Uncle Peter's new wife, and looking back at her precipitate departure from America, she was amazed at her own stupidity.
In the text, Hulga is noted as a cynical and rude character. Her constant poor treatment of others mixed with her superiority complex from a Ph.D. education makes it increasingly difficult to sympathize
That night Hulga “Imagined dialog for them…that reached below the depths that no Bible salesman would be aware of. ”(6) Hulga is intent of seducing and having her way with Manley Pointer whom she finds to be inferior to her. The next morning Hulga goes out to meet Manley Pointer at the gate, but he did not appear at first leading Hulga to make the assumption that she is being duped. As she began to feel furious about being tricked Manley rose up from behind a bush proving Hulga’s assumption wrong, but providing her at taste of the betrayal yet to
“...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).
The artificial leg that Hulga “was as sensitive about the artificial leg as a peacock about his tail” symbolizes her vulnerability and her dependence on things despite what she may think, but from this it would be nearly impossible to guess that Manley was
Throughout the short story, we see how Hulga's arrogance affects her relationships with others. She often brushes off Mrs. Hopewell's attempts to connect with her, believing she's too good for such gestures. Hulga also manipulates the Bible salesman, seeing him only as a means to her own satisfaction and viewing herself as intellectually superior. Her overestimation of her own intelligence limits her desire to learn from others and stifles her personal growth. Unfortunately, her dismissive behavior has also made it difficult for her to build meaningful connections with those
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
Joy/Hulga affects a cynical façade, claiming not to believe in anything. (As she tells Manley, "I don 't have illusions. I 'm one of those people who sees through to nothing.") Yet by the end of the story, Joy/Hulga 's carefully constructed façade is shattered; through the dramatic irony in her absence of self-awareness to the situational irony pervading the final scene, O 'Connor ultimately reveals Joy/Hulga as an innocent who is shocked when she witnesses the beliefs she once espoused as embodied in Manley
Joy’s mother, Mrs. Hopewell, states that it is hard to think of her daughter as an adult, and that Joy’s prosthetic leg has kept her from experiencing “any normal good times” that people her age have experienced (O’Connor 3). Despite the fact that Joy has no experience with people outside of her home, Joy has contempt and spite around her mother and acquaintances alike. In fact, when Joy changed her name to Hulga, she considered it “her highest creative act” and found a self-serving pleasure when the name brought dissatisfaction to her mother (O’Connor 3). When Joy expresses her disgust with her hometown, she also shares that she would much rather be “lecturing to people who knew what she was talking about” (O’Connor 4). Therefore, Joy suggests that the people and ideas that have surrounded her are inferior to her intelligence, and this
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
Furthermore, the word “gentleman” establishes the topical focus for his story, gentility. The Franklin, hoping to change the pilgrims’ views on gentility, asks them to reevaluate their beliefs. This rhetorical question functions as a call to the audience to focus on the main topic,
In which we had to think carefully and cohesively about the characters and their backgrounds. Although Harper Lee proves the point that social prejudice was a highly regarded prejudice. Harper Lees’ novel helps us to become more aware of prejudicial situations that occurred in the
In the novel, ‘To kill a mockingbird, Harper Lee demonstrates the small, imaginary town, the Maycomb County, as a place where racism and social inequality happens in the background of 1930s America. Not only the segregation between whites and blacks, but also the poor lived in a harsh state of living. As Scout, the young narrator, tells the story, Lee introduces and highlights the effects of racism and social inequality on the citizens of Maycomb County by using various characters such as Boo Radley, Tom Robinson, and Mayella Ewell. Firstly, Harper Lee portrays Boo Radley as a victim of social inequality through adjectives and metaphor in the phrase, “There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth he had were yellow and rotten;” ‘Long jagged scar that ran across his face’ tells us that Boo Radley has stereotype about his appearance, which forces to imagine Boo as a scary and threatening person. The phrase, ‘yellow and rotten’ make the readers think as if Boo Radley is poor and low in a social hierarchy, as he cannot afford to brush his teeth.