What Does Good Country People Mean

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In Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People,” Joy is the protagonist. She plans to seduce a traveling Bible salesman named Manly Pointer. While O'Connor doesn’t directly tell us the reasoning that Joy wants to seduce Manly, she does give us clues and we can deduce Joy’s reasoning behind her plans. In the story, Joy, who has changed her name to Hulga, has lost one of her legs in a hunting accident at age 10. She also has a heart condition. “The doctors had told Mrs. Hopewell that with the best of care, Joy might see forty-five” (page 2527). Joy has a grim and gruff outlook on the world and life in general. She doesn’t have any friends, she still lives with her mother, Mrs. Hopewell. She is thirty-two years old and has gone to school as long as she can. She has obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy. She is a self-proclaimed atheist. Manly Pointer shows up one day saying he is a traveling bible salesman. He seems simple-minded and Mrs. Hopewell takes a …show more content…
She plans to seduce him and shatter that innocence.
“She imagined that the two of them walked on the place until they came to the storage barn beyond the two back fields and there, she imagined, that things came to such a pass that she very easily seduced him and that then, of course, she had to reckon with his remorse. True genius can get an idea across even to an inferior mind. She imagined that she took his remorse in hand and changed it into a deep understanding of life. She took all his same away and turned it into something useful” (page 2533).
This quote shows that she thinks he is an innocent and she plans to seduce him and show him how the world works. She thinks that she is more experienced and knowledgeable than he is. She also finds herself attracted to him because they are similar people. He had told Mrs. Hopewell the night before that “I got this heart condition. I may not live long” (page 2529). Joy has the same