Flannery O 'Connor's Short Story Good Country People'

Improved Essays
How far will you go for someone you love ? When a young girl is interleaved by a young bible salesman she falls in love. She is very vulnerable and has a weak heart. She wants to be loved but doesn 't like her guard to be down. He was so perfect, caring and nice. Then he showed his true colors, manipulated her and stole from her. Were there warning signs ? Who can you really trust in the world today? In Flannery O 'connor 's short story “Good Country People” the outside world is depicted as a dangerous and evil place, and conversely, the isolation of the home has protective power. Everyone is not whom they claim to be. Everybody is not who they claim to be. Appearances are only one side of a person. O 'connors portrayal in this short story is explaining how someone as innocent at Hulga can be fooled by someone who claims he is a bible seller. Nobody understands the dangers of someone claiming they are someone else. This short story explains and shows how someone as innocent as a bible seller can really be a con man. Not everyone is innocent , we all have lies and secrets we hide from people and this so happened to be that this 19 year old was a con man who stole from a lot of people and always changed his name after stealing …show more content…
He took advantage of her and she hates that she actually trusted someone. This happens to a lot of people in this age and time today. People get taken advantage of all the time. Hulgas mother saw Manley when he was running across the way and said “ why that looks like the nice dull young man that tried to sell me a bible yesterday… He must have been selling them to the Negroes back in there. He was so simple… but i guess the world would be better off if we were all that simple.” (O 'connor pg.114) Hulgas mom still believes that Manley is a great guy and that he is a very generous man for what he is doing with his time. Not knowing that her daughter just got stripped of her leg and is sitting helplessly in a

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Shelby Taylor Professor K. Lewis English 1102 11 October, 2016 Is there a Good Man? As with most of Flannery O’ Connors writings they were all written with her catholic faith in mind. Flannery O’ Connor was often called a Southern Gothic because of the grotesque incidents that occur in many of her stories (Gioia 402). It is vital to read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” with the same mindset as Flannery O’ Connor, to determine the religious conflicts many characters’ experience throughout the story.…

    • 1282 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Many interesting points and ideas are discussed in Flannery O’Connor’s essay “The Element of Suspense in ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’”. These ideas are not only concurrent with O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, but they can also be broadened and applied to all aspects of literature. O’Connor’s primary theory; one that I believe is prevalent not only in writing, but in everyday life, states that violence is the only thing capable of bringing a person back to reality, it is the only thing that can strip away somebodies personality, and leave behind only their basic and primal instincts; it leaves behind their true essence. O’Connor goes on to explain that “the man in the violent situation reveals those qualities least dispensable…

    • 1596 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Arnold Parallelism

    • 1469 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been Essay With the elements, parallels, and biblical strands to the bible laced within the story, Oates is able to discus how humans tend to often give into deceitful tendencies and how in today society false icons and concepts have replaced religion. To begin with, Oates uses the elements of parallelism to the bible to communicate the understanding that the different strands of Arnolds Friend’s appearance and actions are not that of a normal person. When Arnold first makes an appearance in the story, he appears to be that of any normal guy, although the more Connie looked at him and read into his actions she was able to determine that there was some aspects about him that were strange and posed as a server…

    • 1469 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Flannery O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a story of hypocrisy and irony. O’Connor’s tale of twisted morals and fleeting grasps at old standards takes a family from an innocent trip to Florida to an impending doom laid out before them by the narrator in the first paragraph. The fill of the story is one based on a grandmother’s traditional ways and the conflicting norms of their modern day society. A dying woman’s last attempt at life initially seems valiant, but the 1955 tale brings to light the error in her entire belief system and the proper foundation The Misfit has built his steadfastly on (SparkNotes). The tale brings to light a remorseless view of the world from two different eyes, a hypocritical grandmother and a…

    • 1439 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    After the events of WWII, to say that America had changed drastically was an understatement; with the entirety of the Cold War, amongst other political strife at home and abroad, America during this time was an era of conflicting ideals. Consequently, literature changed its perspective; most commonly, however, was the transition from modernist ideals to postmodernist ideals. Much like modernism, post-modernism offered to reject the ideals presented by popular trends during their time; yet for postmodernism, the rejection, in this case, mostly dealt with homogeneity (a universal standard defined by advancements in American quality of life) and how literature acts as a deconstructive tool (Byam 2259-2260). Yet many of these deconstructions during…

    • 981 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Good Country People” illustrates that dismissing sin instead of accepting it leads to great loss. Hulga believes she is much more intelligent and cultured than her mother and those around her, especially because of her choice to be atheistic. When a good country Bible salesperson, Pointer, arrives, she believes she can easily trick and corrupt him, yet even when he tricks her, she attempts to reaffirm her spiritual position by criticizing his, stating “‘you’re a fine Christian! You’re just like them all - say one thing and do another. You’re a perfect Christian” (184).…

    • 883 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Tim O’Brien always seemed to base his stories off his own experiences in one way or another. More specifically for this essay, we will be talking about “How to Tell a True War Story” in his book “The Things They Carried”. What I am getting at here is that his work never seems to be what we originally think it is. In his story “How to Tell a True War Story”, the point of the story is not about war, it is not a war story. It is a love story; it is a ghost story.…

    • 1549 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    1. How does O'Connor portray the family? The family is portrayed to be a close knit American family. One aspect of the family that stands out however is that the children disrespect the grandmother and the father doesn't reprimand them for it.…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    O’Connor presents this in many of her stories, but it is best portrayed in “Good Country People.” In “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor, the salesman who goes from house to house selling a religious object known as the bible is actually not very religious. Furthermore, at the end of the story the readers come to find out that the man is actually a con man who only uses the bible as a way to steal items that are valuable to others. It can also be seen that when he opens his bible at the barn, there is a cutout in which he has his flask full of alcohol, from this it can be proven that though he knows many things are God and does sell a religious object, and is known to make people believe that he is a good person, especially Mrs. Hopewell. O’Connor presents that he indeed is just using god and his selfishness arise.…

    • 1544 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Everyone knows what it feels like to have expectations put onto them. Expectations the come from personal experience or from other people. A need to improve and do better, have the next generation be better than the previous one. Expectations that will hopefully help to motivate someone and encourage them to be the best that they can be. Yet sometimes expectations can have the complete opposite effect on someone.…

    • 1858 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor enters the debate by using irony to illustrate what constitutes a “good person”. Throughout the short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” the grandmother sees herself as a “good person”. The grandmother is characterized as “good” by saying things like “I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t…

    • 1262 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Flannery O’Connor once said “All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.” Mary Flannery O’Connor was born on March 25, 1925, in Savannah, Georgia. She was the only child. O’Connor was born in a catholic family. When she was 13, her father died of Lupus.…

    • 763 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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.…

    • 1009 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Misfit Sermon Analysis

    • 1264 Words
    • 6 Pages

    The hate and bitterness of his “snarl” is the final implication as to how the Misfit feels about religion (O’Connor 645). Bellamy insists that the reason for the devilish message in the Misfit’s speech is due to his mission to play to role of the Anti-Christ. Bellamy asserts that, “The central message of the Misfit’s sermon, for a sermon is what his remarks amount to, is a familiar one in Flannery O’Connor’s fiction; there is no middle ground between absolute belief in Christ’s messianic fiction and a belief that like is nasty, brutish, and short,” (200). Katherine Feeley notes that the Misfit “embodies all reason and no faith,” which is the opposite of the faith-based personality of the grandmother (202). As Madison Jones remarks, the Misfit “may be haunted, at times tormented, by vision of Christ raising the dead, but he cannot believe it: he was not there.…

    • 1264 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In her short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor introduces the reader to a world of family issues, danger, and murder. The story was written in 1955 during a period of social and racial unrest in the southern United States. Mostly, the story follows O 'Connor 's basic Southern Gothic writing style, a work that is "cold and dispassionate, as well as almost absurdly stark and violent" (Galloway). While the quote gives major insight into the tone of the story, it does not offer a glimpse into O 'Connor 's real message of the story. Her take on the characters is a complex mixture of agreement and disapproval.…

    • 1097 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays