—Hugo Rodriguez
The text that I did not understand was “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor. On my first read through of the text I found it very boring, which definitely impacted my understanding of the text. I read through the text and didn’t even stop and think about what I was reading. In my first reading I learned that the main character has a prosthetic leg and that she does not like people. The main character decides to trust someone for the first time and is then screwed over. That was all I got from the text and didn’t think much else. I didn’t understand what the point or the message was behind this story. The text is called “good country people” and yet I couldn’t connect the text I read to the title. Throughout the text I didn’t get any examples of what a good country person was, all I got was a guy from the country screwing someone over. I didn’t understand what the author was trying to imply by having this church boy turn a whole 180 and have a dark personality in contrast to the way he presented himself at first. The questions prompts were hard to answer so I had to go through the discussion bored to see if I was missing something. One of the questions was asking about, the story’s relation with god. I honestly had no idea, the only thing I got from it was the fact that the pointer was a bible seller. What I ended up realizing was that to be a good country person, one must believe in god. If one does not go to church every week and pray, then they are not a good country person. This led me to reread the text and made me think of this story in a new light. It made me believe that this story is about not giving into appearances. What seems good on paper might not actually be good, or don’t judge a book by its cover. “Good Country People” look like good people on paper because of the prerequisites to become a good country person like going to church and living out a simple life in the boondocks. Throughout the story all Hulga has done was basically judge characters based on their appearance and upbringing. She would make judgements in her mind about them. When she first met pointer, she was making judgements about him, begiving he was a simple boy from the country. What got her interested in him, was that he was simple but had a lot in common with her. I didn’t notice any of these things before in my first read through, it took me three readings to make sense of this story. One thing that took me awhile to understand was the importance of Hulga’s leg. I thought of the wooden leg as utility, as something that one uses to walk around. The leg meant more than just something to walk with. Hulga’s leg was In some ways her soul, and at the end of the text she gives pointer everything she has to offer. It ends with Hulga left with nothing after having everything stripped from her.
