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Who Is Hulga's Arrogance In Good Country People

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The short story “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor features Hulga, a character whose arrogance has caused her to miss out on opportunities and restrict her personal growth. Hulga's dismissive behavior towards others and overestimation of her intelligence are two manifestations of her arrogance. Hulga's arrogance and belief that she is smarter than everyone has resulted in limited personal growth and missed opportunities. She fails to take on challenges and new experiences, which further limits her personal growth. Hulga's unwillingness to engage with others and refusal to recognize potential positive outcomes has caused her to miss out on important opportunities. 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 …show more content…

Rather than exploring the world around her, Hulga seems content to stay within the boundaries of her farm, missing out on the chance to learn from other cultures and experiences. Her reluctance to connect with others also keeps her from forming relationships that could bring joy and meaning to her life. It's a shame, because Hulga is clearly intelligent, but her refusal to embrace change has prevented her from reaching her full potential. If she were to open herself up to new experiences and relationships, she could find the personal growth and fulfillment she's been

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Hulga appreciates Mrs. Freeman because she helps her distinguish a more realistic view life and the world, rather than following the same old good Christian

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She is constantly bringing up her childhood and her shyness which gives us information that there is a problem, but we don't know what it is. The author also starts the story off with "Helga Crane felt no regret as the cliff-like towers faded" and she seems very to herself. Though she shows moments of her getting out of her comfort zone and she is distracted by things like a large crowd of people (paragraph 8), her aunt (paragraph 10). She did bring up her aunts husband which could also potentially be a problem stating "A deep pang of misgiving nauseated her at the thought of her aunt's husband, acquired since Helga's childhood visit. Painfully, vividly, she remembered the frightened anger of Uncle Peter's new wife, and looking back at her precipitate departure from America, she was amazed at her own stupidity.

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Joy/Hulga affects a cynical façade, claiming not to believe in anything. (As she tells Manley, "I don 't have illusions. I 'm one of those people who sees through to nothing.") Yet by the end of the story, Joy/Hulga 's carefully constructed façade is shattered; through the dramatic irony in her absence of self-awareness to the situational irony pervading the final scene, O 'Connor ultimately reveals Joy/Hulga as an innocent who is shocked when she witnesses the beliefs she once espoused as embodied in Manley

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" Hulga intrigues the reader's attention by her flaws and imperfections as a character in this short story. Hulga's behavior and attitude have put her and others in situations because of her range of traits, such as being judgmental, disrespectful, and highly educated.     Throughout the story, Hulga is extremely judgmental. She has become bitter and betrayed by the world, and at the sight of her surrounding, she becomes irritated. The story states “Sometimes she went for walks, but she didn't like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men.

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In the text, Hulga is noted as a cynical and rude character. Her constant poor treatment of others mixed with her superiority complex from a Ph.D. education makes it increasingly difficult to sympathize

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This can be seen through character development and the descriptions. The young woman is in love but also afraid and desires to go home. The man who Helga loves is named Dr. Anderson. Helga says “only the figure of Dr. Anderson obtruded itself” (Larsen 5). From this we can tell that Dr. Anderson, despite Helga's leaving, is sneaking into Helga’s thoughts.

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She thinks that she is no longer like them others around her because she is much smarter than them due to her education. Towards the end of the story Hulga meets a man named Manley. Manley shows her that’s he’s truly smarter than her and helps Hulga see the real reality. This teaches Hulga that even though you might be smarter than the people around you, you do not need to go blind of the fact that it’s the little things in life that matter. Also she learns that she is capable of learning new things every day and to not downgrade the people around

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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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A nihilist has no place for love. Hulga deeply desires to be accepted for who she is. The past experiences in her life consist of people judging her based on her leg. Nihilism is her supposed escape from taking judgments personally, because nothing has meaning. She wants to be accepted, but even her mother doesn't accept her.

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Joy’s mother, Mrs. Hopewell, states that it is hard to think of her daughter as an adult, and that Joy’s prosthetic leg has kept her from experiencing “any normal good times” that people her age have experienced (O’Connor 3). Despite the fact that Joy has no experience with people outside of her home, Joy has contempt and spite around her mother and acquaintances alike. In fact, when Joy changed her name to Hulga, she considered it “her highest creative act” and found a self-serving pleasure when the name brought dissatisfaction to her mother (O’Connor 3). When Joy expresses her disgust with her hometown, she also shares that she would much rather be “lecturing to people who knew what she was talking about” (O’Connor 4). Therefore, Joy suggests that the people and ideas that have surrounded her are inferior to her intelligence, and this

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Due to her mother caring about the farm, she disposed of servants with bad work ethics. Unknowingly, Mrs. Hopewell passes this decorum to her daughter and the narrator says, “She had had plenty of experience with trash. Before the Freemans she had averaged one tenant family a year. The wives of these farmers were not the kind you would want to be around you for very long.” Children learn manners, gratitude, and integrity from their parents which are all things Hulga was not exposed to.

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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

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Hulga is skeptical and believes she is superior to everyone else around her. One day, a seemingly innocent and naive Bible salesman named Manley Pointer comes to visit Hulga and her mother. Hulga is initially skeptical of Manley, but he manages to gain her trust and invites her on a walk. They end up in a secluded barn, where Manley reveals his true intentions and steals Hulga's wooden leg, leaving her stranded.

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According to Erickson’s theory, Ego Integrity vs. Despair, Betty is at a level of Ego of Integrity. She feels whole and satisfied with her achievements and has adapted to her life’s triumphs and disappointments. She had attained a sense of completeness and cohesion of herself (Theris A. Touhy, 2016, p. 37). I asked her, “How would you describe your life now? What activities do you enjoy and how do you spend your time?”

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She didn’t like dogs or cats or birds or flowers or nature or nice young men” (O’Connor 485), Hulga’s personality might be like this because of her wooden leg. She might have given up on herself because she is not able to do everything she will like. For example, a wooden leg is ugly, uncomfortable, and prevents you from doing certain things. Therefore, the leg is preventing Hulga from being who she really wants to be, that is why she pushes away everything that will make her happy and what define who she really is. The author does not directly mention this in the story, but by the way Hulga acts the reader can conclude that the wooden leg symbolizes her new

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