Blindness In Good Country People

“Some can’t be that simple. I know I never could,” says Mrs. Freeman in the ending of the story, which means that perfection is difficult to achieve. However, in the book, Mrs. Freeman and other characters judge people around them just by their appearance. Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” criticizes the people of the American South for their moral blindness and hypocrisy as well as people’s negative habits of stereotyping, being contradictory and cliché. The book delivers the message to be critical and to see things beyond the border.
Mrs. Hopewell is the representative of Southern morality by being blind and hypocrite. She believes to be able to distinguish if a person is a good country people or a trash. In her mind, a good country people is someone who works and is honest, while trash are dishonest. Mrs. Hopewell pretends she is smart enough to manipulate others and to put their weakness in her own good. Mrs. Freeman is a servant at her house, who is known as the nosiest woman on earth as people say. Still Mrs. Hopewell thinks she will put her on charge of everything and use her weakness in a constructive way that she would never feel the lack. It is her blindness that leads her to an unpleasant manipulation by the Bible salesman Manley Pointer. She believes she has no bad qualities, making her

The grotesque is part of the whole story, since the banality of superficial conversation till the moral blindness and the disappointing ending. The grotesque shows the misperception of the world by Mrs. Hopewell and her daughters. People that are busy judging others and not seeing themselves often end up disappointed. The society is in chaos. Who knows the rules will win the game. Mrs. Freeman and Manley have understood it and that is why they are more realistic and survive in a hypocritical society. Mrs. Hopewell and Hulga on the hand, don’t understand it because they are too busy looking at