Perspectives Based on the perceptives on Flannery O’Connor personality she is described to be a loner. O’Connor has a different way of think from other authors because of her “sly humor, her disdain for mediocrity, and her often merciless attacks on affection and triviality.” (Gordon) She wrote her works to fit a new style a dark humor with Southern Gothic theme. O’Connor shows how grotesque the world is and how it needs a light to help change the world. Her works of irony is her main contribution to the world.
How does Flannery O’ Conner’s characterization of Mrs. Hopewell in the short story “Good Country People” contribute to Hulga ’s believed intellectual superiority but ultimate blindness? Flannery O’Conner’s short story, “Good Country People”, follows Mrs.Hopewell, a divorced woman, who lives on a farm with her daughter Joy and her tenant family. Joy, who spitefully changes her name to Hulga, is 32 years old and has a philosophy degree that leads her to look down upon those around her. Disabled by a hunting accident and a heart condition, she is constrained to her rural home.
In "Good Country People," by Flannery O'Connor, there are four distinct characters, each with their own opinions and morals. Mrs. Hopewell categorizes her hired help, Mrs. Freeman, and a traveling Bible salesman named Manley Pointer as "good country people." However, the term "good country people" takes on various meanings throughout the story. Mrs. Hopewell believes that she and her daughter Joy—who has adopted the name Hulga—are superior to everyone else. In contrast to their rural neighbors, they are educated and sophisticated.
In Flannery O’Conner’s story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, there is no one character who is a good person. In fact, there is one character who is very rude, is insistent on needing attention, and has no regard for her own safety. June Starr in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is a bad person who has qualities that, when approached properly, give her the capacity to become good. June Star is not what most people would call a good little girl, she complains, is rude,
Flannery O’Connor expresses the theme of pride in her short stories, “Good Country People”, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”, and “The Displaced Person”. Hulga Hopewell thinks she is above Manley Pointer and can out smart him. Mr. Shiftlet claims everyone else is slime and should b washed away when in reality it is him who is slime. Mrs. McIntyre watches a worker get killed to save herself the trouble of firing him.
Flannery O’Connor, in her short life, wrote one novel and many short stories that impact literature to this day. She wrote two superb short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Good Country People, which have many similarities hidden in the theme of their complex text. While both stories include themes about religion, identity, and the way we view others, the endings are astoundingly different. Nonetheless, O’Connor’s main theme concerning the way we view other people, is the most significant in both short stories. In Good Country People, Mrs. Hopewell repeatedly states that the bible salesman is the “salt of the earth” meaning that he is just a good and simple country boy.
Literary Analysis ENG2106 Student name: Li Michaela Bernice Student ID: 4002551 Word count: Grace and sins Flannery O’Connor was a Southern author from America who frequently wrote in a Southern Gothic style and depended vigorously on local settings and bizarre characters. Her works likewise mirrored her Roman Catholic faith and regularly examined questions of morality and ethics. She created violence in the end of both “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge” to put the stories to the end. She asserted that she has found that violence is strangely capable of returning her characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace, and also violence is the extreme situation that best reveals who
Yichen Guo Ms. Carroll Lit of the South April. 12 , 2017 Symbolism in Flannery O'Connor's stories Flannery O’Connor is one of the greatest southern female writer, and her use of literary techniques is masterful. Most significantly, the uses of symbolism such as sky, name, and Christianity in Flannery O'connor's stories give more depth and meaning to those stories, as it links the themes and develops the plot of the stories. The sunset and the sky have important symbolisms in Flannery O'connor's stories; mostly they not only indicate the emotional stages of the characters, but also signify the start of character's epiphany.
When comparing and contrasting the two short stories “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Revelation” written by Flannery O’Connor, many similarities are noticed between the main characters as well as many differences. The author of the short stories based them on rejection and redemption in the modern world and it is shown in both stories. The Grandmother and Mrs. Turpin are similar and opposite when comparing being selfish and hypocritical, as well the amount of grace in each character’s life’s. Both the grandmother from “A Good Man is Had to Find” and Mrs. Turpin from “Revelation” are selfish characters but show their selfishness in different ways.
Freeman Bailey Freeman Hensley English 11/ Fourth Period 05 March 2018 Part 14: Rough Draft #2 In Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” she writes, “If you would pray,’ the old lady said, ‘Jesus would help you.’
“Her characters, who sometimes accept and other times reject salvation, often have a warped self-image, especially of their moral status and of the morality of their actions” (Hobby). This addresses how some of the important lines in the story describe to the reader about the extreme exaggeration and the psychological realism of the church, which O’Connor wanted to express within her story. The extreme use of exaggeration and how the use of the characters bring a sense of an uncanny feeling of good and evil within each character, portrays how deep the meaning is seen in this short story. “the story is filled with dark, grotesque humor created largely by the story 's many ironies” (Hobby). The author of this source highly emphasizes that O’Connor creates this dark humor for her characters to build on her meaning in the story and uses irony to create the distortion within her
The story takes place at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in America, when desegregation is finally achieved. Flannery O’Connor’s use of setting augments the mood and deepens the context of the story. However, O’Connor’s method is subtle, often relying on connotation and implication to drive her point across. The story achieves its depressing mood mostly through the use of light and darkness in the setting.
In “Good Country People”, the bible salesman is not as good as Hulga is led to believe. He steals her leg and runs, leaving her in a hayloft to fend for herself (384). This type of twist is what makes O’Connor’s writing so exciting and compelling. O’Connor’s life in the south greatly influenced the style and dialogue within her
Flannery O’Connor is a renowned Southern author, noted for her gothic works and heavily Catholic themes. She focuses predominantly on racial tensions, morality, and divine grace. The religious and moral themes of her short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, converge on the character of the grandmother. Despite the self-proclamations of fulfilling what it means to be a Southern lady, Grandmother holds a superficial grasp of her religion. Throughout the story, the Grandmother never truly changed, only her ostensible actions did.
In the short stories, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery O’Connor and “A Rose For Emily” by William Faulkner, a noticeable comparison is made between the two. Both short stories have alarming and horrifying plots that criticize southern corruption through the main character’s distorted view of the world. One is about a grandmother and her family being viciously murdered in cold blood, and the other is about a woman who murders her lover and then sleeps beside his decaying body. The two short stories both share uniquely similar characters and settings in the way that they view their own distorted reality of the South. Firstly, racism, which is evident in both short stories, shows the influence that the southern culture has on the settings for the two protagonists.
