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Love In Flannery O Connor's Good Country People

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There are many things that factor into reasons for loving someone. Often times when people think of reasons for loving someone, they only think about the immediate motives. People do not consider reasons outside the obvious. However, there are many hidden motives that cause people t love one another. Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” and William Shakespeare’s “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun”, show that love can be influenced by an ulterior motive, through the use of specific word choice and storyline twists.
In Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People”, the Bible salesman’s motive for wanting to get Hulga to fall in love with him was solely to steal her wooden leg. It is originally believed that Pointer likes Hulga for who she is. He is very persistent in trying to get her to love him. Readers are led to believe that Pointer is a Christian because he is going around selling Bibles. It is not until the very end of the story that readers are shown the true character of Manley Pointer.
It is possible that the motive for stealing Hulga’s leg is that Mrs. Freeman hired the Bible salesman to steal the artificial leg from her. “Something about her seemed to fascinate Mrs. Freeman and then one day Hulga realized that it was the artificial leg” (O’connor 436). It is interesting that …show more content…

William Shakespeare’s “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun” shows that ulterior motives for love can also refer to personality and non physical features of a person. Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” and William Shakespeare’s “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun”, show that love can be influenced by an ulterior motive, through the use of specific word choice and storyline

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They kiss somewhat more and Manley at last takes Hulga 's leg. She gets furious, however Manley declines to return it. He opens up his Bible to uncover it 's holding bourbon and cards; things being what they are he is a trick craftsman and Manley Pointer isn 't his genuine name. Hulga gets angrier with him, yet Manley packs up his stuff and discloses to her that, in spite of her instruction, he, a basic book of scriptures businessperson, figured out how to trick her. He at that point keeps running off with her leg, abandoning her powerless in the

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(12). This illustrates how Hulga has had no romantic interactions in her life and is now having her first kiss at the age of 32 with Manley Pointer. Because Pointer was the first person to show interest in Hulga, she allowed herself to be vulnerable to him, and he used that to exploit her. During her childhood and adulthood, she was always looked at with pity and faced judgment and rejection, whether that be her appearance, strength, or attitude by doctors, peers, or her family. In the article, Mrs. Hopewell expresses her pity for Hulga stating “She thought of her [Hulga] still as a child because it tore her heart to think instead of the poor stout girl in her thirties who had never danced a step or had any normal good times.”

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Not only did Hulga’s wooden leg have a symbolic meaning in the story “Good Country People,” but also the imagery of her spectacles has a symbolic meaning as well. Her glasses symbolically represent the loss of vision and gaining of insight. At the beginning of the story, Hulga is wearing these glasses, which many of us tend to associate with being smart. However she does not gain insight until Manley removes her glasses. It is stated in “Good Country People”, “When her glasses got in his way, he took them off of her and slipped them into his pocket” (O’Conner 1350).

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Throughout the short story, we see how Hulga's arrogance affects her relationships with others. She often brushes off Mrs. Hopewell's attempts to connect with her, believing she's too good for such gestures. Hulga also manipulates the Bible salesman, seeing him only as a means to her own satisfaction and viewing herself as intellectually superior. Her overestimation of her own intelligence limits her desire to learn from others and stifles her personal growth. Unfortunately, her dismissive behavior has also made it difficult for her to build meaningful connections with those

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Hulga wants to leave home and really does not want to come back. She does not have a good relationship with her mother because Hulga is “too smart” for her family which breaks the bond between them. Since Hulga dislikes her mom she changed her name to make her mother even more mad at her. 2. There is something suspicious about Manley Pointer throughout the story.

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She would not use it. She continued to call her Joy to which the girl responded but in a purely mechanical way.” (O’Connor 222) The chasm between Hulga and her mother made Hulga to withdraw from establishing a good meaningful family relationship with her mother, and end up attached to a guy, Manley Pointer, really quickly later. Manley Pointer, the guy with important role as his name implies that he is going to “point” out something to change Hulga’s

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She uses the term good country people and “nice young men” (page 3) as insults to keep those types of people at arm’s length due to her insecurity; Manly Pointer could be described by both of those terms. When Hulga’s mother calls Manly the salt of the earth as a reference to him being a good country person she makes a rude remark about getting “rid of the salt of the earth” (page 4) so she could eat. Then during the meal she ignored him because she doesn’t believe that he is worth her time, but still observes “sideways how he handled his knife and fork” (page 5) like he is a science experiment and she is recording her data not observing him as a person of equal stature. All of these actions show the reader that Hugla does not partake in real life but prefers her make believe land where all of her assumptions are right before interacting with anyone or anything. When she does this to Manly Pointer it allows him to figure out what he needs to be to contribute to her needs without her getting in the

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Pointer further took her wooden leg after Pointer sweet-talked her and said, “it’s what makes you different. You ain’t like anybody else. ”and further refused to give the leg back to Hulga. Literary, the betrayal occurred when Pointer tricked Hulga to take off her leg and took it away.

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Age doesn’t always resemble or account for the level of maturity within ourselves. Instead, our choices are limited and reflected from our experiences, substantiating the transformations that originate from the outcomes. For Hulga in, Good Country People, tolerating with her heart condition, in result impacts her personality and consolidates her character and mind to be defensive. This unhealthy responsibility and the implication of her weak heart, serves to show that there is strength absent and necessary for her to deal with betrayal, masked as love. This motif O’Connor utilizes, not only indicates her physical weakness, but further reveals the magnitude of her flaw, as she struggles emotionally and mentally with deception.

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Hulga, intelligent but naïve, is tricked by the dashing bible salesman, Manley Pointer. She owns glasses and one prosthetic leg, which she can't live without. Until one-day Hulga's perfect night was turned upside down. The drastic turn started when Manley slithered on of his many lovely lies to her and said, "I like girls that wear glasses. "(O'Connor, 7), and he reeled her out to the barn by telling her what she wanted to hear.

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