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Good Country People Character Flaws

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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. Her wall of intelligence makes her believe that she is smarter than Manly Pointer, this opens her up to the chance of being blindsided. Another contribution is the fact that she does not observe her surroundings because of her overconfidence of abilities, this allows Manly to play to her weaknesses and be the person he knows she needs. Her …show more content…

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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