Good Country People Characters

Good Country People Characters

Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People" is a seemingly two–dimensional story based around Hulga Hopewell, a pessimistic atheist, who lives in an old–fashioned country home alongside her mother, Mrs. Hopewell, some others include the farmhand, Mrs. Freeman, and Mrs. Freeman's two daughters, Carramae and Glynese. Throughout the story, Mrs. Hopewell, along with the other characters, assert their views to hulga that good country people are the foundation of living a good life. The story compares and contrasts these distinctive character views in order to create a more realistic and three–dimensional outlook from the context. After reading over the story a few times, I noticed a lot of consistency with the underlying meanings that the author ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...Instead of looking down on her for getting involved with every one's business, Mrs. Hopewell looks at this as a positive quality by letting her be responsible for everything around the house. When it comes to her treatment toward Hulga however, Mrs. Hopewell seems to lack a certain sense of sympathy; for example, when she would ask Hulga for help in the fields, she would tell her "If you can't come pleasantly, I don't want you at all". This suggests an obvious intolerance for her negative behavior. The relationship between Hulga and her mother seems to be that of a disobedient child and her intolerant mother. Regardless of Hulga's accomplishments, Mrs. Hopewell still seems incapable of getting past her negative attitude. For example, she believes college did nothing to break her out of her shell even though Hulga went through years of school to get her Ph. D in Philosophy. Mrs. Hopewell claims she can't brag about her daughter being a philosopher because philosophy "ended with the Greeks and Romans". On top of her school accomplishments, Mrs. Hopewell also finds a problem with Hulga's name change. At the age of 21, Hulga got her official name changed from "Joy", which obviously upset her mother as she believed that Hulga looked through the dictionary for the ugliest name imaginable; she even went as far as to say she "thought of the broad blank

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