“Good Country People” written by Flannery O’ Connor is a story about a family in the rural area

“Good Country People” written by Flannery O’ Connor is a story about a family in the rural area. The mother, Mrs. Hopewell, owns a farm, and she lives with two collaborators Mr. and Mrs. Freeman. Mrs. Hopewell also has a daughter who named Joy, and she is 32 years old and well-educated. Unfortunately, Joy has an artificial leg due to the shooting accident in her childhood, and she does not go to work because she has a heart problem. For that reason, Joy always has a grumpy attitude toward people, and she thinks that everyone is not smart except her. When the Bible salesman named Manley Pointer appears, Joy tries to fool him. However, Pointer is an expert because he tricks her to take her fake leg and refuse giving back. At this point, Joy knows she was bamboozled by Manley Pointer, a Bible salesman. This plot leads to the central idea that even though we have a high education does not mean that we are ready for the real life.
In the short story “Good Country People,” O’Connor has described the character Joy- Hulga as “a large blonds girls who had an artificial leg” (O’Connor 1), and he also mentions Joy “had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy.” (O’Connor 3) The author lets Joy is the only person in the story has high education, but she does not experience outside life because of her “week heart” problem (O’Connor 3). Moreover, the only activity Joy does while she is at home is “sat on her neck in a deep chair, reading” (O’Connor 3) a lot of scientific books. This phrase is shown in the story that Joy is lack of relationships, and she does not experience it before. Even though Joy’s health is weak, she believes she is smarter than and above the rest of people around her because “she could smell their stupidity.” (O’Connor 3) For that reason, Joy thinks that she can fool the Bible salesman when “she had started thinking of it as a great joke and then she had begun to see profound implications in it.” (O’Connor 6) However, at the first time she comes to real life, she could not avoid being ripped off by a Bible salesman who is thought “a very simple man.” However, his thought is all about how to steal her wooden leg. Joy- Hulga knows that she is bamboozled when “she saw him grab the leg and then she saw it for an instant slanted forlornly across the inside of the suitcase.” (O’Connor 9)
The protagonist is Joy who is very intelligent because she has a Ph. D in Philosophy. (O’Connor 3) Moreover, if Joy has not had a heart condition and a wooden leg, “she would be in a university lecturing to people who knew that she was talking about.”(O’Connor 3) Joy is also a stubborn daughter when she is an act of uprising against her mother. Mrs. Hopewell gives her daughter a beautiful name “Joy”; however, Joy does not like her name because she thinks the name does not fit her, so “as soon as she was twenty-one and away from home, she had had it legally changed. Mrs. Hopewell was certain that she had thought and thought until she had hit upon the ugliest name in any language. Then she had gone and had the beautiful name, Joy, changed without telling her mother until after she had done it. Her legal name was Hulga.” (O’Connor 2) Throughout the story, Joy- Hulga is also shown to be immature about her relationship with her mother. “When Hulga stumped into the kitchen in the morning (she could walk without making the awful noise but she made it Mrs. Hopewell was certain –because it was ugly-sounding), she glanced at them and did not speak.” (O’Connor 2) At this point, the author gives the story the main character is intelligent, stubborn and immature to show how they relate to the central idea. Even though we have the high education but not experience life, it does not mean that we are not ready for the real life. Moreover, the person that serves as the antagonist in this story is Manley pointer, a Bible salesman who steal Joy’s wooden leg. The author does not give much detail about Manley’s background, but as the readers read the story, they can I know point out how his character is. When he takes Hulga’s leg, he also says “I may sell Bibles, but I know which end is up and I wasn’t born yesterday and I know where I’m going” (O’Connor 9), which portrays him as a person who doses not need high education to fool a Ph.D. girl.