ipl-logo

Temptation Theme In Good Country People

546 Words3 Pages

“The dragon is by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the father of souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” St. Cyril of Jerusalem uses this as a metaphor of temptation which is always lurking around. Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People”, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, and “The Displaced Person” all show this theme of temptation. All Three characters in Flannery O’Connor’s short stories display the sin of pride. Hulga Hopewell believes she is better than Manley Pointer, Mr. Shiftlet thinks he can do no wrong and that all others are slime, and Mrs. McIntyre stands and watches as one of her employees gets killed so she does not have to fire him. In “Good Country People”, Hulga Hopewell expresses pride when she thinks she is exceptionally better than Manley Pointer. She assumes that she can get Mr. Pointer to fall …show more content…

Shiftlet’s pride is thinking he is perfect, but in “The Displaced Person”, pride is manifested by Mrs. McIntyre when she does nothing to stop Mr. Guizac from being killed. Mr. Guizac tries to get one of the negroes, Sulk, to marry is white cousin. Mrs. McIntyre is appalled by this because blacks and whites were not to marry. She then decided to fire him, but when a tractor is about to run him over she does not stop it to save herself the trouble. Mrs. McIntyre does not wat to have to worry about firing Mr. Guizac so when she sees his death is near she does nothing to stop it. Flannery O’Connor expresses the theme of pride in her short stories, “Good Country People”, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, and “The Displaced Person”. Hulga Hopewell thinks she is above Manley Pointer and can out smart him. Mr. Shiftlet claims everyone else is slime and should b washed away when in reality it is him who is slime. Mrs. McIntyre watches a worker get killed to save herself the trouble of firing him. All three short stories reflect the key point of temptation to sin from St. Cyril’s

Show More
Related
1321 Words | 6 Pages

Flannery O’Connor’s success as a writer was indubitably related to her own personal physical and mental failures; without them it is doubtful that she would have become one of America’s greatest fiction writers. It was through her suffering that she was able to relay so much allegorical understanding of her characters and bring them to life (and sometimes death.) Because of her debility with Lupus she became a fearless alliterator that disturbed the entire literary world, even until today. One of her greatest short stories provides insight into her personal life of misfortune above and beyond the others. A biographical and psychological analysis of "Good Country People” is that it was written by the author Flannery O'Connor as an emotional

Read More
793 Words | 4 Pages

Essay 3: Pride as a Character Flaw, Option A In Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor, Joy (later renamed Hulga) becomes blinded by her pride due to a bible salesman that turns out to be less than adequately stereotyped. Duped into succumbing to his tricks, the main character Joy allows her pride to keep her from seeing the truth until it’s too late. Joy’s pride contributes to her downfall because she hides behind a wall of intelligence to accommodate for her wooden leg.

Read More
1437 Words | 6 Pages

One of the seven deadly sins is the act of having too much pride. Pride in general is not an evil feeling to have. It is human to have pride in oneself, but having too much pride is unhealthy and will cause problems somewhere along the way. Two characters who show a harmful amount of pride are Sylvia from Toni Bambara’s “The Lesson” and Sammy John Updike’s “A&P”. A famous quotation states “Pride (arrogance) comes before Destruction... and a haughty spirit, before a fall.”

Read More
724 Words | 3 Pages

The story takes place at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in America, when desegregation is finally achieved. Flannery O’Connor’s use of setting augments the mood and deepens the context of the story. However, O’Connor’s method is subtle, often relying on connotation and implication to drive her point across. The story achieves its depressing mood mostly through the use of light and darkness in the setting.

Read More
1005 Words | 5 Pages

Authors of short fiction always strive to communicate a message in their stories for the reader to discover. Their message makes their story memorable and it gives the reader something to take away. Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral” and Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” have very comparable messages concealed behind their stories. Although these two authors share their messages with vastly different stories, the protagonists in their stories convey similar messages for the reader to uncover. The authors of both “Cathedral” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” use the protagonist to communicate that maintaining a stubborn mindset is human nature and it takes a significant experience to change one’s way of thinking.

Read More
543 Words | 3 Pages

We even see this theme again in Good Country People. Hulga’s pessimistic view of the world is central to the story, allowing her to quickly judge the salesman for what he truly is when he pulls a flask out from inside the bible. This reoccurring theme, concerning our background and the way we judge people, must have been very important to O’Connor. Skillfully, O’Connor knits the theme into both short stories, miraculously basing the entire plot and characters around this central

Read More
1068 Words | 5 Pages

Literary Analysis ENG2106 Student name: Li Michaela Bernice Student ID: 4002551 Word count: Grace and sins Flannery O’Connor was a Southern author from America who frequently wrote in a Southern Gothic style and depended vigorously on local settings and bizarre characters. Her works likewise mirrored her Roman Catholic faith and regularly examined questions of morality and ethics. She created violence in the end of both “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge” to put the stories to the end. She asserted that she has found that violence is strangely capable of returning her characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace, and also violence is the extreme situation that best reveals who

Read More
1142 Words | 5 Pages

Flannery O’Connor is a renowned Southern author, noted for her gothic works and heavily Catholic themes. She focuses predominantly on racial tensions, morality, and divine grace. The religious and moral themes of her short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, converge on the character of the grandmother. Despite the self-proclamations of fulfilling what it means to be a Southern lady, Grandmother holds a superficial grasp of her religion. Throughout the story, the Grandmother never truly changed, only her ostensible actions did.

Read More
923 Words | 4 Pages

St. Cyril of Jerusalem made the analogy that life is like a road that must be traveled with a dragon on the side, waiting to devour any who stray off the road. Within the analogy, the dragon represents the personal temptations everyone has struggled to overcome in order to reach God, who waits at the end of the road. Although everyone struggles with their own personal temptations, most can be put into one of the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, anger, sloth, envy, lust, and gluttony. Flannery O’Connor focused on these in her short stories by creating characters that embodied certain sins. In some of her most known stories, such as “Good Country People,” “The Life You Save May be Your Own,’’ and “The Displaced Person,” she focused on pride, greed, and anger, respectively.

Read More
897 Words | 4 Pages

Flannery O'Connor's stories gave the idea of what she wanted to show, which was to show humor with a violent twist. She wanted to be able to change her stories which made her write in a different way. For instance, her story “ Good Country people”, showed irony as well. There was a part where Mrs. Freeman said “ Some can't be that simple. . I know I never could.

Read More
965 Words | 4 Pages

In “Good Country People”, the bible salesman is not as good as Hulga is led to believe. He steals her leg and runs, leaving her in a hayloft to fend for herself (384). This type of twist is what makes O’Connor’s writing so exciting and compelling. O’Connor’s life in the south greatly influenced the style and dialogue within her

Read More
1164 Words | 5 Pages

Essay #2 The life you save may be your own The story “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” is written by an American writer and essayist called Flannery O’Connor, who is an important figure for the American literature. The origin of the author is from the southern part of America and largest part of the time she uses the Southern Gothic style. Very often she relies on the grotesque characters, just like Mr. Shiftlet in this story, which originate from the Southern Gothic style.

Read More
1677 Words | 7 Pages

They show how sin can tempt any individual whose faith is still developing. D. M. Mckeithan writes in her essay Hawthorne’s

Read More
1393 Words | 6 Pages

In “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Flannery O’Connor creates a story where the roles of good and evil blend together. In the short story, a family in the rural South gets caught up with a criminal named the Misfit after their wreck and they end up getting murdered. The clash between the grandmother and the Misfit highlights the religious aspects of the story and also O’Connor’s beliefs. Her stylistic traits of violence, distortion, and religion are used to convey a corrupt world that needs salvation. O’Connor’s trait of violence is used throughout to reveal the corrupt and criminal world that emanates the need for salvation.

Read More
1062 Words | 5 Pages

“Pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death” (Hurst 2). This is how James Hurst describes pride in his heart-wrenching short story, “The Scarlet Ibis.” What speaks to me most about this quote is its profound truth. For the majority of people, pride is either a positive or negative thing, but what Hurst and I seem to agree about is the fact that pride can be both. It is an undeniable symptom of the human condition, a tool that can either create or destroy, and is responsible for the best and worst parts of history.

Read More

More about Temptation Theme In Good Country People

Related Topics

Open Document