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Conflict In Flannery O Connor's Good Country People

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Flannery O’Connor’s unique southern gothic style defies expectations of a good story in her writing Good Country People, A Good Man is Hard to Find, and Everything that Rises Must Converge. All three stories incorporate unexpected conclusions and intense conflicts. She not only met the usual expectation of an interesting plot, but skyrocketed above it.
Ms. O’Connor utilized shocking endings for her stories in order to end her stories with the reader craving more. For example, in Good Country People, a fat, disabled, nihilistic woman named Hulga is seduced by a bible salesman, who then promptly steals her prosthetic leg. The whole short story revolves around how Hulga has no trust in anybody. However, when she meets the bible salesman, Manley …show more content…
The main conflict in this short story belongs to Hulga/Joy. Her conflict focuses on herself; woman vs self. Hulga became extremely negative ever since she began requiring a prosthetic leg. The world she lives in revolves around isolation, faithlessness, and her mother infantilizing her due to her disability. Therefore, she rejects happiness, symbolized by changing her name to Hulga as opposed to keeping her previous name, Joy. She defies all religion, and purposely isolates herself from others in order to avoid more pain. Consequently, when Manley arrives, he creates a large rift inside of Hulga. She has to decide whether or not to trust him. However, she very obviously chooses to trust him. Hulga allowed him to call her by Hulga, despite being uncomfortable when Mrs. Freeman used that name for her. She felt as if her name was a personal, secret thing she did, but she trusted Manley with it. And, despite being incredibly uncomfortable with doing so, she showed him how to take off her leg as requested, showing how much trust she had in him. Then, when he stole her leg and ran off, her internal conflict grew even more. This conflict added depth to Hulga, allowing readers to better understand her as a person. Pushing the plot forward is another benefit that this conflict …show more content…
My main concern previous to this summer assignment was the level of interest I would have in the novels we read, as well as the difficulty they may contain. However, after reading, I thoroughly enjoyed the short stories and I genuinely believe that the reading level will be sufficiently difficult, yet not impossible. The amount of reading required for the summer assignment felt fairly familiar to the previous year. Nevertheless, I never had to write 5 papers in one summer. This doesn’t raise any concerns for me, however, because I did realize that AP Junior English would require more work, and I prepared myself for it. Flannery O’Connor’s short stories surpassed my expectations of good writing, and therefore I feel excited to read more in AP Junior

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