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Good Country People Comparison

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Temptation is an occurrence in all daily routines, accompanied with pride and selfishness, due to our lack of knowledge. In “Good Country People”, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, and “The Displaced person” written by Flannery O’ Connor, temptation, pride, and selfishness are common themes. Each short story shows the weakness people have and how easily they are able to give into the sins laid before them. Many famous people have been quoted or have written about how easily temptation, pride, and being selfish can come about, including St. Cyril of Jerusalem. Temptation, pride, and selfishness are unavoidable evils, and they are brought about by our human weakness, each of these short stories, exposed each characters flaws. In “Good Country People”, Joy Hopewell, portrayed the opposite attitude of her name she had a …show more content…

Shiftlet. Mr. Shiftlet is enticed by the old and beaten up car on the ladies property, “…and [his eyes] had moved to a shed where he saw the square rusted back of an automobile. “You ladies drive?” he asked. “That car ain’t run in fifteen year,”…”Nothing is like it used to be” he said. “The world is almost rotten”(O’ Connor 53). Eventually, Mr. Shiftlet gets the car running and the elderly woman is so impressed with him and his actions that she wants him to marry her daughter. They get married and they take off together, until they get about one-hundred miles away, where they reach a restaurant. They go inside the restaurant and the girl falls asleep, thus the Mr. Shiftlet takes off without her, leaving her alone and helpless. Mr. Shiftlet does not resist the temptation, therefore showing his human weakness. Mr. Shiftlet, however feels remorse for his actions as he continues on and he is reminded of the God above. His remorse does not mean the action never happened, it just showed that he was a God fearing

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When Shiftlet first notices the car on the Craters’ property, it is presented as a potential path to salvation: helping a family in need by fixing up their old car. However, Shiftlet takes the path of deviance and plots to steal the car from the family. The car represents a fork in the road between two life paths: That of righteousness and that of deceit. As Shiftlet is driving off alone with the car that he conned his way into attaining when “a cloud… [descends] over the sun… with a guffawing peal of thunder from behind and fantastic raindrops” (O’Connor 538). The storm that ensues represents the divine reaction to the deplorable actions of Shiftlet and his choice of running from it represents his decision to pursue a life filled with sin.

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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.

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