The story "Good Country People," by Flannery O"Conner was very interesting but a strange story to understand at first. The story itself has many satires and symbols within in it. I was never sure of the meaning or the purpose, but I have some ideas about it. Mrs. Hopewell was a very mysterious character she came across as a nice lady, but she had issues herself which she made herself seem as a perfectionist. Her daughter Joy had a wooden leg because hers had been shot off during a hunting accident when she was ten. Joy was very intelligent, but she didn't dress real fancy and she wasn't too worried about her appearance. Her mother wasn't to happy about this, most parents would love for their children to have a great education, but as far as Mrs. Hopewell goes she would rather her have a beautiful appearance.
Joy ends up changing her name to Hulga, probably to anger her mother. I think the mother named her Joy because she wanted her to be pleasant and all that good stuff, but Joy changed her name to the way she felt her mother viewed her with disappointment. Joy was thirty-two years old and her mother treated her like a child. Mrs. Hopewell was always talking bad about other people or using sarcasm towards them, this makes me believe that she was really unfit with herself and needed to find her spirit or God. Mrs. Freeman has two daughters, one is fifteen and pregnant, and the other was eighteen with many admires. I feel that Mrs. Hopewell wanted Joy to be more like them and not the intelligent girl that she was.
Manley Pointer was a bible salesman in the story that tries to convince Mrs. Hopewell into buying a bible for her parlor. She lies and tells the boy she has one at her bedside but it is really up in the attic somewhere. I think she has lost faith and has a controversy with religion in her life. The salesman comes over to see Joy and they go out on a picnic of some kind together, he ends up taking out his bible in which he had stashed whiskey, playing cards with pornography on them, and condoms.
