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Analysis Of Good Country People By Flannery O Connor

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Flannery O’Connor utilizes her character Joy to challenge ideas perpetuated by society in “Good Country People.” O’Connor accomplishes this by giving Joy an unorthodox philosophy to live by. This philosophy is similar to Nihilism due to the fact that Joy believes life is absent meaning. As a result of this Nihilistic belief, she challenges society’s institutions in the form of her mother, Mrs. Hopewell. However, with the introduction of Manley Pointer, Joy betrays her own school of thought by making statements that contradict her Nihilistic outlook. With this in mind, the purpose of this paper will be to construct a coherent understanding of Joy’s version of Nihilism by analyzing statements made by her throughout the text. After, it will examine how she accurately lives her philosophy in the first half of the story but contradicts herself in the later half. At the apex of Joy’s philosophy is her belief, or rather the lack thereof, in illusions. When Joy states “I’m one of those people who see through to nothing,” she is …show more content…

Mrs. Hopewell’s thoughts on her daughter’s actions are revealed through narrative monologue. On page 175, the narrator recounts Mrs. Hopewell’s negative feelings towards Hulga’s appearance stating: “she went about all day in a six-year-old skirt and a yellow sweat shirt with a faded cowboy on a horse embossed on it.” On page 175, the narrator details Mrs. Hopewell’s opinions on Hulga’s manners stating “It seems to Mrs. Hopewell that every year she grew less like other people and more like herself - bloated, rude and squint-eyes. And she said such strange things!” (176). In a sense, O’Connor is using Mrs. Hopewell to symbolically represent society’s expectations of women. Hulga defies these expectations through her Nihilistic lifestyle. However, in her conversations with Manley Pointer, Hulga contradicts this

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