Good Country People: Metaphor and Irony
Joy Hulga is the main character of Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People." She represents the proud, young educated student who has renounced any faith in Christ. As her mother Mrs. Hopewell puts it to Manley Pointer, the Bible salesman, "My daughter is an atheist and won't let me keep the Bible in the parlor" (O'Connor 278). Manley turns out to be both Joy's double and foil -- atheistic like herself, but also seeking to seduce her for her false leg (he is a collector of oddities), even as she seeks to seduce him to show that she does not believe in sin. The great irony is that proud Hulga falls for Manley -- only to be rejected. For O'Connor, a Roman Catholic, sin is the absence of good -- and the absence of any good whatsoever at the end of the story is what acts as the real blow to Joy Hulga, leaving her high up in the loft without assistance, her pride taken away from her and only the reflection of her own need of salvation staring back at her from the distance. This paper will show how in "Good Country People" O'Connor uses irony and metaphor to convey a sense of the gulf that exists between "enlightened" but ignorant Hulga and "humble" but informed Joy.
Mrs. Hopewell's daughter Joy is a college graduate whose education has been so good that she is no longer qualified to do anything but look down her nose at everyone around her -- after all, O'Connor ironically notes, one cannot say that "my daughter is a philosopher,"...
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