— Anonymous
On my first read-through of “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor, I did not realize its true depth and status as a “Great Work”. Going through the text my first time, I really did not see a lot of themes or connections that really made the text great. I also did not see all the little things that Flannery O’Connor wrote so well. Initially, I only saw a general theme of “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Pointer seemed incredibly nice at first, but it turns out he was two-faced, and really did not practice what he preached. He managed to trick Hulga who judged him as well, and so at the end of the day, Pointer was just a two-faced character who fooled a person who thought she was different. However, once I started writing about the story and going through it another couple of times, I picked up on so many other beautifully written things such as character development, figurative language, and possible statements the author is making about people in the real world. The powerful character development really brought the story alive and made it very humbling to me almost. Throughout the whole first half of the text, Hulga is the portrayal of what is against the norm. She is educated, atheist, and has a wooden leg to name a few. Her outlook on life was far different from everyone else in her area according to the perception of the text. Looking back, it seems like she is being set up as the antagonist of the story, even attempting to seduce a Good Country person like Pointer. However, very quickly the roles flip inside the barn. On my first read, I only acknowledged the character change of Pointer going from a good guy to a heel, but I did not see they flipped roles. Hulga planned to seduce Pointer, but Pointer ended up coercing Hulga. Hulga was the antagonist but turned into the protagonist. Hulga was supposed to be rebellious, but Pointer was the real rebel. Since I did not acknowledge that change the first time around, a lot of the story was lost to me. Pointer was supposed to be a “Good Country” person but he went exactly against Hulga’s definition of what that means. So does that bring into question whether or not Hulga is actually a “Good Country” person? Pointer and Hulga are just so different that the definition of what that phrase means seems to come into question as well. Only once I wrote these ideas down did I realize the amount of questioning that can be done with the text that makes it so phenomenal. Part of that comes from the repetition of the phrase “Good Country People” which is a brilliant addition by the author. That phrase gives some kind of baseline and symbol to the type of people we are supposed to see in the text. However, by the end of the story, it no longer becomes a clear-cut label. I also thought the mentioning of Christianity gave other possible statements in the story such as relating Hulga’s perception of Christianity after Pointer’s heel turned to how Christians are perceived in the current day. There are just so many beautiful aspects of the text that I missed during my first read but acknowledged through deeper analysis.
