Good Country People Comparative Essay

Words: 936
Pages: 4

The short stories “Good Country People” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” are both written by Flannery O’Connor. “Good Country People” is about Mrs. Hopewell, her daughter Joy (also named Hulga), and their hired help, Mrs. Freeman, who meet a Bible peddler named Manley Pointer. Eventually, Manley gains Hulga’s trust, thus leading her to go on their picnic and making her think she will captivate him. But when they arrive at a barn, he steals her wooden leg and reveals his conniving self, therefore forcing her to come to some abrupt realizations. Realizations are also made in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, the story in which a family is on a road trip to Florida where a criminal runs free. On the way, the grandmother mistakenly tells her son to turn on a dirt road for a stop, and then causes her hidden cat to make the father crash into a ditch. They then encounter a stranger who may be of some help, but because that stranger is the Misfit, the terrible criminal, he and his comrades kill the entire family (aside from the cat). In these two stories, a realization of most characters is achieved through the antagonists, two characters who are ironically anything but “good” men. In order to skew Hulga’s beliefs, Manley gains her trust and …show more content…
According to McDermott, the grandmother is “a person of diluted faith without any true convictions about what she professes to believe.” The way that she deceives herself is by being a profuse habitual liar. For example, the embarrassment she feels from figuring out that the journey down the dirt road is useless makes her keep it to herself rather than telling the family to turn around. Once she has caused the car crash, all of her family is shot after the encounter with the Misfit. To avoid her death, she talks selfishly in circles without even taking notice of the rest of her