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Who Is Hulga In Good Country People

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In the story “Good Country People,” by Flannery O’Connor, there is a young woman named Joy, who has a lot of good things going for her until a traumatic event takes place in her life. Hulga lost her leg when she was 10 years old in a hunting accident. After the traumatic event, everything changes about her; she goes from being a joyful person to being a very mean person. Joy even changes her name to Hulga. She is a very educated woman with a Ph. D in philosophy, but she is disrespectful to her mom and always has a negative attitude. Hulga thought she was better than everybody and smarter than everybody in the country, until one day she came across a countryman who was really a con-man. Hulga does not deserve sympathy for having her wooden leg stolen because …show more content…

She yells at her mom saying “Woman! Do you ever look inside; do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!” (O’Connor 375). Hulga is being very disrespectful to her mom and uses mean insults whenever she interacts with people she believes are inferior to her in intelligence and whenever she does not get her way. Her outbursts are never nice. She even changes her name from Joy to Hulga as a way of disappointing her mother.
Her behavior makes it hard to feel sorry for her because she became rude and mean to people she feels superior to after she lost her leg. Hulga barely tolerates Ms. Freeman who comes to their door daily and she is incredible rude to Manley by ignoring him. She insults him throughout the dinner, even calling him “the salt of the earth” (O’Connor 377) when she tells her mother to get rid of him.
There is no reason to feel sorry for Hulga in Good Country People. She attempts to take advantage of other people because they are deemed “good,” demonstrates a very mean attitude in her interactions with others, and she feels superior to everyone she encounters. She is an unpleasant person and deserves what she

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