—Hugo Rodriguez
The text that I connected with was “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Conner. This text was difficult to understand at first, and I had to read through it a couple of times in order to build an understanding of this text. I connected with this text because the main character of the story Hulga, feels as if she is different from the people around her, and has trouble connecting with them. Its not that she has trouble instead its more like she does not want to be around them. She does not approve of them and sees them as simple minded and dumb. She went to the city and went to college and got a education. The reason I connect with her is because I feel the same way, I see myself as different from other people. All my life I’ve known that I simply see the world differently than other people, unlike others I still have the feelings we used to we have when we were children. I still see the world the same way, unlike most people who start to see the world as grey and full of constraint. I don’t try and go out of my way to meet or connect with people. I rather just go and do my thing and if I hit it off with someone then I hit it off with them. Hulga is like that, she hasn’t let anyone really in and so she lacks experience with interacting with people. That is why the first time she lets someone in, it ends up horribly as the person actually ended up being a complete different person from whom she thought. What I like about this story is that it does not end in a happy note instead it ends in a dark sad note. As Hulga ends up robbed of all the things that precious to her. This is something that I feel really makes this story stand out from the rest and help it become a great work of literature. Its very realistic and the end was something I was not expecting. Its dark, cruel and most importantly it is realistic. After reading the text I thought about my own life. If I don’t go out of my way to actually meet and learn about people, it would help me learn fake from real. Hulga didn’t interact with people, she lacked a lot of experience in social interactions. It makes sense that she couldn’t see Pointer’s fake personality, she just hasn’t developed intuition. She believed that she understood the nature of the country people but has never conducted an experiment and gathered data. How could she make a conclusion about a whole group of people without putting in the time to interreact and understand them. This text made me think next time I decide to assume something based on superficial things. I cannot really compare this text to anything else that ive read, it’s a unique story. In the end I found this text to be a hard but rewarding reading experience.
