Good Country People Hulga Summary

Then she had gone and had the beautiful named, Joy, changed without telling her mother until after she had done it. Her legal name was Hulga.”

Unlike Hooper in “A Minister’s Veil,” in “Good Country People,” Hulga is a crippled character who believes in no God. She not only has a wooden leg, she also has poor eyesight and a heart condition. However, Kate Oliver stated these “physical afflictions symbolize her emotional, intellectual, and spiritual impairments.” What Oliver means is that Joy/Hulga’s physical defects represent her misshapened spirit and her broken outlook towards religion. Oliver also stated that “Joy-Hulga revels in her rejection of God. She is a self-proclaimed atheist.” Furthermore, Hulga loved philosophy and this is what she believed in rather than God. She believed in the philosophies that taught that nothing exist outside the self and this belief is another manifestation of her spiritual defects. She chose to believe in this nothing

Joy-Hulga was a woman of grace and elegance turned boisterous and clunky. Once known as Joy, a leading lady, until she felt the urgency to change her name. As she had down in order to better fit oneself. The reader finds Joy-Hulga in stances of vulnerability, victimism, and the act of living within two worlds.

Over the course of the novel, one realizes that Hagar's loneliness and depression are, in fact, brought on by her pride, detached emotions, obstinacy and ignorance which she uses, subconsciously or not, to push those who love her most away. Hagar Currie was incapable of loving others, much like

She relies on her materialistic tendencies to make her beautiful. However, they result in nothing but disappointment. After seeing herself in the compact given to her by Pilate, Hagar exclaims “Look at how I look. I look awful. No wonder he didn’t want me.

"Good Country People" by Flanner O’Connor is an excellent example of the effective use of irony and character development. From start to finish there is a steady progression of irony that stems from the title of Good Country People. Some instances of irony are blatant, but others need a closer reading to find. It’s amazing the complexity of the characters that occurs in such a short span of pages. The success of “Good Country People” comes not only from O’Connor’s use of irony but also from the interplay among and the complexity of her main characters.

Exploitation is a tough game to play unless you have the right cards. “Good Country People,” by Flannery O'Connor, exposes the prideful, arrogant, selfish Hulga. Hulga is the sort of person who places herself on a momentous pedestal, and her doctoral degree in philosophy adds glamour to her self image; giving her more of a reason to look down on people for being intellectually inferior. Originally, her birth name was Joy but because her name did not reflect who she is, she decided to change it to something more vulgar to fit her personality; it was an added bonus that it also upset her mother, someone who she truly despises. At a glance, Hulga seems to be in pursuit of love, but a closer reading suggest that her true cynical goal is to manipulate

By definition joy means a great feeling of pleasure and happiness. In Mary Flannery O'Connor's short story Good Country People, Joy Freeman was not at all joyful. Actually, she was the exact opposite. Joy's leg was shot off in a hunting accident when she was ten. Because of that incident, Joy was a stout girl in her thirties who had never danced a step or had any normal good times. (O'Connor 249). She had a wooden leg that only brought her teasing from others and problems in doing daily activities. Joy was very rude as well. In the story it speaks of her comments being so rude and ugly and her face so glum that her mother's boss, Mrs. Hopewell, would

Hulga uses her handicap, a leg partially shot off during a hunting accident, as an excuse for stomping loudly around the house in the hope of irritating her mother. Although Hulga sees herself as intellectually superior, her self-esteem and self-image are low due to her handicap, as evidenced by her complete disregard for her appearance. Further evidence of her low self-esteem is her changing her name from Joy to Hulga, a name that her mother, Mrs. Hopewell, felt was ?the ugliest name in any language.? Unbeknownst to Hulga, Mrs. Hopewell grieved for her daughter?s tragic life and excuses much of her behavior ?because of

Hulga is a 33 year old girl that “attempts to embrace her freedom by reinventing herself, beginning with her name”(100-01) to Hulga. She also throws her prosthetic leg around making loud noises often just to annoy the people around her. This and many other things that she does show that she is a very childish adult and is living a life of madness and ungratefulness. She has been studying most of her life and got a phd in philosophy which is not easy at all. But there is one major deformity that she has and it makes her vulnerable. When she was only a small child she lost her leg in an accident and has to walk with a prosthetic leg for

Why are men consider to be the more dominate sex? Women throughout history have proven that they can do anything a man can and more, but still women are seen as lesser. Feminist believe in equality between the sexes. Author Flannery O’Connor applied feministic thinking in her story “Good Country People.” The story describes a mother and daughter experience when a young Bible salesman approaches them. Hulga and her mother, Mrs. Freeman, make excellent subjects for the story’s feministic theme. “Good Country People” shows the feminism by including a strong female character, acceptance of opposite gender roles, and symbolism for the male sex.

Changing her name was a very arrogant action. Her arrogance is a major part of her personality. This is evident in her interactions with Mrs. Hopewell. She obviously looks down upon her as ignorant - she stands up in the middle of a meal and says “do you ever look inside and see what you are not?” (637). The arrogance is evident to the reader, because if Hulga were to really look at herself she would see all that she is not. She obviously thinks of herself as above all the good country people, saying “she would be in a university lecturing to people who knew what she was talking about” (637).

"We all know that education, more than anything else, improves our chances of building better lives," said the great Nelson Mandela. The recurring theme of using education being used as power is significantly prevalent in the short stories Good Country People by Flannery O'Connor, and Everyday Use by Alice Walker. In the short story Good Country People, Joy (the protagonist, later referred to as Hulga) holds the center of attention. She has been exceptionally educated. In fact, she holds a doctoral degree in philosophy. She holds a reputation of being extremely intelligent, capable of taking on some of the most challenging tasks that the world has to offer. With her formal education, she feels as though she has learned everything about life

The purpose of this essay is to correlate the theme of three different stories that had been read. I decided to choose the stories “Good Country People”, “Hills Like White Elephants”, and “The Storm.” I believe that the theme across these stories is to beware of the wolf in sheep clothing. In these stories, there was an antagonist that posed as a protagonist who even though their intentions may have looked well skin deep, the underlying intentions against the main character were not of good intent. I will describe certain situations in each of the three stories that show the theme I have noted.

To illustrate, regardless of the care that Aunty Doll provided Hagar over the years, she thought of her as "a homely woman with her sallow skin"(Laurence, 17), snubbing her merely because she was hired help.  Furthermore, Hagar's "God-fearing" (Laurence, 16) father who pulled "himself up by his boot straps" (Laurence, 14), seeded her immense dislike for human weakness.  To elaborate, Hagar states, "for she was a flimsy, gutless creature"(Laurence, 4) about her own "ungrateful fox-voiced mother" (Laurence, 4).  Hagar detested her own mother because she perceived her as weak, a characteristic her father taught her to hate.  Right through the novel, we see very little humanistic qualities of Hagar, but more accurately an immovable stone figure filled with Currie pride.