Black Humor In Flannery O Connor's Good Country People

Flannery O’Connor was a writer from the twentieth century who made her characters inflexible, ignorant, and with too much pride. She used black humor mixed with some of her religious beliefs, lots of irony, and extreme situations. She wrote two novels in her lifetime and thirty-two short stories. Her first novel was “Wise Blood’ in 1952. She was born in Savannah, Georgia to Edward F. O’Connor and Regina Cline. She died August 3, 1964 at age 39 from lupus. In her stories O’Connor leaves with a shocking conclusion and leaves the reader with the freedom to think of the central idea themselves. Flannery O’Connor’s influence in American Humor may be seen as insightful, with grotesque characters, and with over the top black humor. Lawrence …show more content…
In O’Connor’s “Good Country People” the story starts out with mainly surrounding Hulga and Manley Pointer. Hugla is daughter of Mrs. Hopewell, the one who owns the whole farm. Hugla is thirty-two years old, has a degree in philosophy, and thinks she is slicker than everyone else. Mrs. Freeman is the farming tenant for the farm and she has two daughters also. Manley Pointer comes to the house selling bibles. Mrs. Hopewell thinks everyone is just good country people, so she lets him in. She says in one part ”Good country people are the salt of the earth”(O’Connor 121). Once he enters the house he starts talking about the bible. Hugla and Manley end up getting together for a picnic date the next day. She has a plan that since he is just a stupid boy that she will try to seduce him. They started walking in the woods together just talking about God, how she believes in nothingness, and her leg. He asks if there is a spot where they can just sit down. So she takes him to the old barn loft in the woods. They starting kissing in the barn, he then takes off her glasses from her face. He wants her to tell him that she loves him and how to take off her leg. She shows him how to do it than does it himself, but instead of giving it back to her he takes it and puts it in his brief case in the hollowed out bible. He leaves her there with her one good leg, no glasses, and …show more content…
In the story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” it is about a grandma and her family going on a vacation to Florida with her son, Bailey, his wife, and their two kids, June Star and John Wesley. Grandma is looking at the paper in the beginning talking about a man called the Misfit that escaped from the Federal Pen and heading to Florida just like them. No one listened to the old grandma and they went anyway. They left the next day and grandma was the first in the car with her cat, Pitty Sing. To pass time and shut the kids up she would tell them old stories that she knew. They find a restaurant and stop to eat at The Tower for barbeque sandwiches. Where they meet the own named Red Sammy. Red Sammy and the grandma talk a lot about how you cant trust no one anymore and how things are not the way they use to be. He says, "A good man is hard to find," Red Sammy said. "Every- thing is getting terrible. I remember the day you could go off and leave your screen door unlatched. Not no more”(O’Connor 142). After they leave grandma takes many little catnaps, but wakes up from her own snoring. One time when she wakes up she recognizes a plantation that she visited when she was a young girl. The house she said had six white columns across the front and oaks leading up to the house, and that there was a secret panel in the house. The kids