Using Reader Response Theory to analyze “Good country people” Flannery O’Connor

    Convey what you take as the overall theme/message/main idea or argument in one of the short stories from our unit of study utilizing the key aspects of either the Reader Response Theory or Formalism. (As discussed above, for the second essay you will do the theory you did not choose to use on the first.). As many of you have noted in the discussion forum—strictly adhering to just one approach can be limiting. So you may allow yourself to integrate some of the other approach. My goal is to give you the opportunity to really focus on either the author’s strategies for creating meaning, or the reader’s capacity to create meaning so that you can see the richness of each theory. Your primary goal is to make an argument about the main idea and to separate out different reasons for your coming to this conclusion about the meaning into separate paragraphs (remember that analysis means to take apart) so your reader can really see how you came up with your thesis, your argument about what was created in the story. So decide whether you want to focus your discussion of this “creation” mostly using your own experience as a reader as the primary source of data and focus or mostly using the author’s employment of specific literary tools

    • Contain a thesis that states the theme, or overall argument, the story makes about the topic.
    • Development of that thesis with thorough support/evidence and analysis of that information that is organized so that a reader can easily understandand experience your ideas.

    • The order in which you discuss things matters. In an early draft order should not be your concern, but as you progress through your reading and re-reading, and re-tooling of your essay, imagine the experience your reader is likely to have. Just as a teacher needs to pay attention to the order in which he/she offers certain pieces of information to the class, so does a writer.
    • Some background information on the story will be important to give your reader early on as you will be assuming your reader is unfamiliar with this text, but don’t overdo the summary portion of your essay. Your reader will be eager to learn what you make of this story more than the details of the story in a vacuum. (They could get that information online!)
    • Your intro should serve to prepare your reader for your thesis.
    • Your thesis should prepare your reader for a discussion of how the writer’s overall meaning/theme/argument is created through either 1) literary devices/writerly tools and decisions (Formalism) OR 2) your individual interaction with the text as determined by your experiences, values, associations, etc. (Reader Response)—depending on which approach you are taking for the particular essay.
    • Body paragraphs should take on, one at a time, different aspects of how this meaning (which was conveyed in the thesis) was created.
    • Ideas and instances from the text should be smoothly integrated with your ideas and should adhere to MLA conventions when as in the stance of quoting. (See Library Tutorial from last week)
    • In your concluding paragraph, review for your reader your overall claim about that the story’s meaning and how that meaning was created.
    • Be open to changing your thesis! Good writing is almost always the product of revision—of seeing your ideas differently over and over again.
    • Start soon—good work takes time.

    Reader response:

    • Focuses on the idea that a variety of interpretations are possible.
    • Emphasizes that each person rings his or her own experiences and points of view to bear while reading.
    • Is interested in people’s different reactions to ambiguous moments in the reading.

    For example: One reader may think that Yael saw the beads as a magical presence that could in some way bring her mother back to life, make it not true, showing that the character is still in the denial stage of the grieving process. And yet another reader may see the beads as a possible reality—that maybe the mother really did swallow the beads at some point and the presence of the beads is important because they force the main character to accept mystery around her mother and mark the beginning of a journey of trying to learn about her deceased mother.

    Ask yourself questions such as:

    -How does this part of the text affect me?
    -How am I interpreting this open-ended moment in the text?
    -What experiences of mine influence my interpretation/reactions/judgments?
    -How do things in the text and in my life support the meaning I am taking away from this work/this part of the work?

    Good Country People
    By Flannery O’Connor
    1925-1964
    |Return to Short Stories Home Page|
    Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she
    was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and
    reverse, that she used for all her human dealings. Her
    forward expression was steady and driving like the
    advance of a heavy truck. Her eyes never swerved to left
    or right but turned as the story turned as if they
    followed a yellow line down the center of it. She
    seldom used the other expression because it was not
    often necessary for her to retract a statement, but when she did, her face
    came to a complete stop, there was an almost imperceptible movement of
    her black eyes, during which they seemed to be receding, and then the
    observer would see that Mrs. Freeman, though she might stand there as
    real as several grain sacks thrown on top of each other, was no longer
    there in spirit. As for getting anything across to her when this was the
    case, Mrs. Hopewell had given it up. She might talk her head off. Mrs.
    Freeman could never be brought to admit herself wrong to any point. She
    would stand there and if she could be brought to say anything, it was
    something like, “Well, I wouldn’t of said it was and I wouldn’t of said it
    wasn’t” or letting her gaze range over the top kitchen shelf where there
    was an assortment of dusty bottles, she might remark, “I see you ain’t ate
    many of them figs you put up last summer.”
    They carried on their most important business in the kitchen at breakfast.
    Every morning Mrs. Hopewell got up at seven o’clock and lit her gas
    heater and Joy’s. Joy was her daughter, a large blonds girl who had an
    artificial leg. Mrs. Hopewell thought of her as a child though she was
    thirty-two years old and highly educated. Joy would get up while her
    mother was eating and lumber into the bathroom and slam the door, and
    before long, Mrs. Freeman would arrive at the back door. Joy would hear
    her mother call, “Come on in,” and then they would talk for a while in
    low voices that were indistinguishable in the bathroom. By the time Joy
    came in, they had usually finished the weather report and were on one or
    the other of Mrs. Freeman’s daughters, Glynese or Carramae. Joy called
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    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03them Glycerin and Caramel. Glynese, a redhead, was eighteen and had
    many admirers; Carramae, a blonde, was only fifteen but already married
    and pregnant. She could not keep anything on her stomach. Every
    morning Mrs. Freeman told Mrs. Hopewell how many times she had
    vomited since the last report.
    Mrs. Hopewell liked to tell people that Glynese and Carramae were two
    of the finest girls she knew and that Mrs. Freeman was a lady and that she
    was never ashamed to take her anywhere or introduce her to anybody they
    might meet. Then she would tell how she had happened to hire the
    Freemans in the first place and how they were a godsend to her and how
    she had had them four years. The reason for her keeping them so long
    was that they were not trash. They were good country people. She had
    telephoned the man whose name they had given as reference and he had
    told her that Mr. Freeman was a good farmer but that his wife was the
    nosiest woman ever to walk the earth. “She’s got to be into everything,”
    the man said. “If she don’t get there before the dust settles, you can bet
    she’s dead, that’s all. She’ll want to know all your business. I can stand
    him real good,” he had said, “but me nor my wife neither could have
    stood that woman one more minute on this place.” That had put Mrs.
    Hopewell off for a few days.
    She had hired them in the end because there were no other applicants but
    she had made up her mind beforehand exactly how she would handle the
    woman. Since she was the type who had to be into everything, then, Mrs.
    Hopewell had decided, she would not only let her be into everything, she
    would see to it that she was into everything – she would give her the
    responsibility of everything, she would put her in charge. Mrs. Hopewell
    had no bad qualities of her own but she was able to use other people’s in
    such a constructive way that she had kept them four years.
    Nothing is perfect. This was one of Mrs. Hopewell’s favorite sayings.
    Another was: that is life! And still another, the most important, was:
    well, other people have their opinions too. She would make these
    statements, usually at the table, in a tone of gentle insistence as if no one
    held them but her, and the large hulking Joy, whose constant outrage had
    obliterated every expression from her face, would stare just a little to the
    side of her, her eyes icy blue, with the look of someone who had achieved
    blindness by an act of will and means to keep it.
    When Mrs. Hopewell said to Mrs. Freeman that life was like that, Mrs.
    Freeman would say, “I always said so myself.” Nothing had been arrived
    at by anyone that had not first been arrived at by her. She was quicker
    than Mr. Freeman. When Mrs. Hopewell said to her after they had been
    on the place for a while, “You know, you’re the wheel behind the wheel,”
    and winked, Mrs. Freeman had said, “I know it. I’ve always been quick.
    It’s some that are quicker than others.”
    Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor Page 2 of 19
    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03“Everybody is different,” Mrs. Hopewell said.
    “Yes, most people is,” Mrs. Freeman said.
    “It takes all kinds to make the world.”
    “I always said it did myself.”
    The girl was used to this kind of dialogue for breakfast and more of it for
    dinner; sometimes they had it for supper too. When they had no guest
    they ate in the kitchen because that was easier. Mrs. Freeman always
    managed to arrive at some point during the meal and to watch them finish
    it. She would stand in the doorway if it were summer but in the winter
    she would stand with one elbow on top of the refrigerator and look down
    at them, or she would stand by the gas heater, lifting the back of her skirt
    slightly. Occasionally she would stand against the wall and roll her head
    from side to side. At no time was she in any hurry to leave. All this was
    very trying on Mrs. Hopewell but she was a woman of great patience. She
    realized that nothing is perfect and that in the Freemans she had good
    country people and that if, in this day and age, you get good country
    people, you had better hang onto them.
    She had had plenty of experience with trash. Before the Freemans she had
    averaged one tenant family a year. The wives of these farmers were not
    the kind you would want to be around you for very long. Mrs. Hopewell,
    who had divorced her husband long ago, needed someone to walk over
    the fields with her; and when Joy had to be impressed for these services,
    her remarks were usually so ugly and her face so glum that Mrs. Hopewell
    would say, “If you can’t come pleasantly, I don’t want you at all,” to which
    the girl, standing square and rigid-shouldered with her neck thrust
    slightly forward, would reply, “If you want me, here I am – LIKE I AM.”
    Mrs. Hopewell excused this attitude because of the leg (which had been
    shot off in a hunting accident when Joy was ten). It was hard for Mrs.
    Hopewell to realize that her child was thirty-two now and that for more
    than twenty years she had had only one leg. She thought of her still as a
    child because it tore her heart to think instead of the poor stout girl in her
    thirties who had never danced a step or had any normal good times. Her
    name was really Joy but as soon as she was twenty-one and away from
    home, she had had it legally changed. Mrs. Hopewell was certain that she
    had thought and thought until she had hit upon the ugliest name in any
    language. Then she had gone and had the beautiful name, Joy, changed
    without telling her mother until after she had done it. Her legal name was
    Hulga.
    When Mrs. Hopewell thought the name, Hulga, she thought of the broad
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    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03blank hull of a battleship. She would not use it. She continued to call her
    Joy to which the girl responded but in a purely mechanical way.
    Hulga had learned to tolerate Mrs. Freeman who saved her from taking
    walks with her mother. Even Glynese and Carramae were useful when
    they occupied attention that might otherwise have been directed at her.
    At first she had thought she could not stand Mrs. Freeman for she had
    found it was not possible to be rude to her. Mrs. Freeman would take on
    strange resentments and for days together she would be sullen but the
    source of her displeasure was always obscure; a direct attack, a positive
    leer, blatant ugliness to her face – these never touched her. And without
    warning one day, she began calling her Hulga.
    She did not call her that in front of Mrs. Hopewell who would have been
    incensed but when she and the girl happened to be out of the house
    together, she would say something and add the name Hulga to the end of
    it, and the big spectacled Joy-Hulga would scowl and redden as if her
    privacy had been intruded upon. She considered the name her personal
    affair. She had arrived at it first purely on the basis of its ugly sound and
    then the full genius of its fitness had struck her. She had a vision of the
    name working like the ugly sweating Vulcan who stayed in the furnace
    and to whom, presumably, the goddess had to come when called. She saw
    it as the name of her highest creative act. One of her major triumphs was
    that her mother had not been able to turn her dust into Joy, but the greater
    one was that she had been able to turn it herself into Hulga. However,
    Mrs. Freeman’s relish for using the name only irritated her. It was as if
    Mrs. Freeman’s beady steel-pointed eyes had penetrated far enough
    behind her face to reach some secret fact. Something about her seemed to
    fascinate Mrs. Freeman and then one day Hulga realized that it was the
    artificial leg. Mrs. Freeman had a special fondness for the details of secret
    infections, hidden deformities, assaults upon children. Of diseases, she
    preferred the lingering or incurable. Hulga had heard Mrs. Hopewell give
    her the details of the hunting accident, how the leg had been literally
    blasted off, how she had never lost consciousness. Mrs. Freeman could
    listen to it any time as if it had happened an hour ago.
    When Hulga stumped into the kitchen in the morning (she could walk
    without making the awful noise but she made it – Mrs. Hopewell was
    certain – because it was ugly-sounding), she glanced at them and did not
    speak. Mrs. Hopewell would be in her red kimono with her hair tied
    around her head in rags. She would be sitting at the table, finishing her
    breakfast and Mrs. Freeman would be hanging by her elbow outward
    from the refrigerator, looking down at the table. Hulga always put her
    eggs on the stove to boil and then stood over them with her arms folded,
    and Mrs. Hopewell would look at her – a kind of indirect gaze divided
    between her and Mrs. Freeman – and would think that if she would only
    keep herself up a little, she wouldn’t be so bad looking. There was
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    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03nothing wrong with her face that a pleasant expression wouldn’t help.
    Mrs. Hopewell said that people who looked on the bright side of things
    would be beautiful even if they were not.
    Whenever she looked at Joy this way, she could not help but feel that it
    would have been better if the child had not taken the Ph.D. It had
    certainly not brought her out any and now that she had it, there was no
    more excuse for her to go to school again. Mrs. Hopewell thought it was
    nice for girls to go to school to have a good time but Joy had “gone
    through.” Anyhow, she would not have been strong enough to go again.
    The doctors had told Mrs. Hopewell that with the best of care, Joy might
    see forty-five. She had a weak heart. Joy had made it plain that if it had
    not been for this condition, she would be far from these red hills and good
    country people. She would be in a university lecturing to people who
    knew what she was talking about. And Mrs. Hopewell could very well
    picture here there, looking like a scarecrow and lecturing to more of the
    same. Here she went about all day in a six-year-old skirt and a yellow
    sweat shirt with a faded cowboy on a horse embossed on it. She thought
    this was funny; Mrs. Hopewell thought it was idiotic and showed simply
    that she was still a child. She was brilliant but she didn’t have a grain of
    sense. It seemed to Mrs. Hopewell that every year she grew less like other
    people and more like herself – bloated, rude, and squint-eyed. And she
    said such strange things! To her own mother she had said – without
    warning, without excuse, standing up in the middle of a meal with her
    face purple and her mouth half full – “Woman! Do you ever look inside?
    Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!” she had cried
    sinking down again and staring at her plate, “Malebranche was right: we
    are not our own light. We are not our own light!” Mrs. Hopewell had no
    idea to this day what brought that on. She had only made the remark,
    hoping Joy would take it in, that a smile never hurt anyone. The girl had
    taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete
    loss. You could say, “My daughter is a nurse,” or “My daughter is a school
    teacher,” or even, “My daughter is a chemical engineer.” You could not
    say, “My daughter is a philosopher.” That was something that had ended
    with the Greeks and Romans. All day Joy sat on her neck in a deep chair,
    reading. Sometimes she went for walks but she didn’t like dogs or cats or
    birds or flowers or nature or nice young men. She looked at nice young
    men as if she could smell their stupidity.
    One day Mrs. Hopewell had picked up one of the books the girl had just
    put down and opening it at random, she read, “Science, on the other hand,
    has to assert its soberness and seriousness afresh and declare that it is
    concerned solely with what-is. Nothing – how can it be for science
    anything but a horror and a phantasm? If science is right, then one thing
    stands firm: science wishes to know nothing of nothing. Such is after all
    the strictly scientific approach to Nothing. We know it by wishing to
    know nothing of Nothing.” These words had been underlined with a
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    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03blue pencil and they worked on Mrs. Hopewell like some evil incantation
    in gibberish. She shut the book quickly and went out of the room as if
    she were having a chill.
    This morning when the girl came in, Mrs. Freeman was on Carramae.
    “She thrown up four times after supper,” she said, “and was up twict in
    the night after three o’clock. Yesterday she didn’t do nothing but ramble
    in the bureau drawer. All she did. Stand up there and see what she could
    run up on.”
    “She’s got to eat,” Mrs. Hopewell muttered, sipping her coffee, while she
    watched Joy’s back at the stove. She was wondering what the child had
    said to the Bible salesman. She could not imagine what kind of a
    conversation she could possibly have had with him.
    He was a tall gaunt hatless youth who had called yesterday to sell them a
    Bible. He had appeared at the door, carrying a large black suitcase that
    weighted him so heavily on one side that he had to brace himself against
    the door facing. He seemed on the point of collapse but he said in a
    cheerful voice, “Good morning, Mrs. Cedars!” and set the suitcase down
    on the mat. He was not a bad-looking young man though he had on a
    bright blue suit and yellow socks that were not pulled up far enough. He
    had prominent face bones and a streak of sticky-looking brown hair
    falling across his forehead.
    “I’m Mrs. Hopewell,” she said.
    “Oh!” he said, pretending to look puzzled but with his eyes sparkling, “I
    saw it said ‘The Cedars’ on the mailbox so I thought you was Mrs.
    Cedars!” and he burst out in a pleasant laugh. He picked up the satchel
    and under cover of a pant, he fell forward into her hall. It was rather as if
    the suitcase had moved first, jerking him after it. “Mrs. Hopewell!” he
    said and grabbed her hand. “I hope you are well!” and he laughed again
    and then all at once his face sobered completely. He paused and gave her
    a straight earnest look and said, “Lady, I’ve come to speak of serious
    things.”
    “Well, come in,” she muttered, none too pleased because her dinner was
    almost ready. He came into the parlor and sat down on the edge of a
    straight chair and put the suitcase between his feet and glanced around
    the room as if he were sizing her up by it. Her silver gleamed on the two
    sideboards; she decided he had never been in a room as elegant as this.
    “Mrs. Hopewell,” he began, using her name in a way that sounded almost
    intimate, “I know you believe in Chrustian service.”
    “Well, yes,” she murmured.
    Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor Page 6 of 19
    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03“I know,” he said and paused, looking very wise with his head cocked on
    one side, “that you’re a good woman. Friends have told me.”
    Mrs. Hopewell never liked to be taken for a fool. “What are you selling?”
    she asked.
    “Bibles,” the young man said and his eye raced around the room before he
    added, “I see you have no family Bible in your parlor, I see that is the one
    lack you got!”
    Mrs. Hopewell could not say, “My daughter is an atheist and won’t let me
    keep the Bible in the parlor.” She said, stiffening slightly, “I keep my
    Bible by my bedside.” This was not the truth. It was in the attic
    somewhere.
    “Lady,” he said, “the word of God ought to be in the parlor.”
    “Well, I think that’s a matter of taste,” she began, “I think…”
    “Lady,” he said, “for a Chrustian, the word of God ought to be in every
    room in the house besides in his heart. I know you’re a Chrustian because
    I can see it in every line of your face.”
    She stood up and said, “Well, young man, I don’t want to buy a Bible and
    I smell my dinner burning.”
    He didn’t get up. He began to twist his hands and looking down at them,
    he said softly, “Well lady, I’ll tell you the truth – not many people want to
    buy one nowadays and besides, I know I’m real simple. I don’t know how
    to say a thing but to say it. I’m just a country boy.” He glanced up into
    her unfriendly face. “People like you don’t like to fool with country
    people like me!”
    “Why!” she cried, “good country people are the salt of the earth! Besides,
    we all have different ways of doing, it takes all kinds to make the world
    go ‘round. That’s life!”
    “You said a mouthful,” he said.
    “Why, I think there aren’t enough good country people in the world!” she
    said, stirred. “I think that’s what’s wrong with it!”
    His face had brightened. “I didn’t intraduce myself,” he said. “I’m
    Manley Pointer from out in the country around Willohobie, not even from
    a place, just from near a place.”
    Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor Page 7 of 19
    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03“You wait a minute,” she said. “I have to see about my dinner.” She went
    out to the kitchen and found Joy standing near the door where she had
    been listening.
    “Get rid of the salt of the earth,” she said, “and let’s eat.”
    Mrs. Hopewell gave her a pained look and turned the heat down under
    the vegetables. “I can’t be rude to anybody,” she murmured and went
    back into the parlor.
    He had opened the suitcase and was sitting with a Bible on each knee.
    “I appreciate your honesty,” he said. “You don’t see any more real honest
    people unless you go way out in the country.”
    “I know,” she said, “real genuine folks!” Through the crack in the door
    she heard a groan.
    “I guess a lot of boys come telling you they’re working their way through
    college,” he said, “but I’m not going to tell you that. Somehow,” he said,
    “I don’t want to go to college. I want to devote my life to Chrustian
    service. See,” he said, lowering his voice, “I got this heart condition. I
    may not live long. When you know it’s something wrong with you and
    you may not live long, well then, lady…” He paused, with his mouth
    open, and stared at her.
    He and Joy had the same condition! She knew that her eyes were filling
    with tears but she collected herself quickly and murmured, “Won’t you
    stay for dinner? We’d love to have you!” and was sorry the instant she
    heard herself say it.
    “Yes mam,” he said in an abashed voice. “I would sher love to do that!”
    Joy had given him one look on being introduced to him and then
    throughout the meal had not glanced at him again. He had addressed
    several remarks to her, which she had pretended not to hear. Mrs.
    Hopewell could not understand deliberate rudeness, although she lived
    with it, and she felt she had always to overflow with hospitality to make
    up for Joy’s lack of courtesy. She urged him to talk about himself and he
    did. He said he was the seventh child of twelve and that his father had
    been crushed under a tree when he himself was eight years old. He had
    been crushed very badly, in fact, almost cut in two and was practically not
    recognizable. His mother had got along the best she could by hard
    working and she had always seen that her children went to Sunday School
    and that they read the Bible every evening. He was now nineteen years
    old and he had been selling Bibles for four months. In that time he had
    sold seventy-seven Bibles and had the promise of two more sales. He
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    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03wanted to become a missionary because he thought that was the way you
    could do most for people. “He who losest his life shall find it,” he said
    simply and he was so sincere, so genuine and earnest that Mrs. Hopewell
    would not for the world have smiled. He prevented his peas from sliding
    onto the table by blocking them with a piece of bread which he later
    cleaned his plate with. She could see Joy observing sidewise how he
    handled his knife and fork and she saw too that every few minutes, the
    boy would dart a keen appraising glance at the girl as if he were trying to
    attract her attention.
    After dinner Joy cleared the dishes off the table and disappeared and Mrs.
    Hopewell was left to talk with him. He told her again about his
    childhood and his father’s accident and about various things that had
    happened to him. Every five minutes or so she would stifle a yawn. He
    sat for two hours until finally she told him she must go because she had
    an appointment in town. He packed his Bibles and thanked her and
    prepared to leave, but in the doorway he stopped and wring her hand and
    said that not on any of his trips had he met a lady as nice as her and he
    asked if he could come again. She had said she would always be happy to
    see him.
    Joy had been standing in the road, apparently looking at something in the
    distance, when he came down the steps toward her, bent to the side with
    his heavy valise. He stopped where she was standing and confronted her
    directly. Mrs. Hopewell could not hear what he said but she trembled to
    think what Joy would say to him. She could see that after a minute Joy
    said something and that then the boy began to speak again, making an
    excited gesture with his free hand. After a minute Joy said something else
    at which the boy began to speak once more. Then to her amazement, Mrs.
    Hopewell saw the two of them walk off together, toward the gate. Joy had
    walked all the way to the gate with him and Mrs. Hopewell could not
    imagine what they had said to each other, and she had not yet dared to
    ask.
    Mrs. Freeman was insisting upon her attention. She had moved from the
    refrigerator to the heater so that Mrs. Hopewell had to turn and face her in
    order to seem to be listening. “Glynese gone out with Harvey Hill again
    last night,” she said. “She had this sty.”
    “Hill,” Mrs. Hopewell said absently, “is that the one who works in the
    garage?”
    “Nome, he’s the one that goes to chiropractor school,” Mrs. Freeman said.
    “She had this sty. Been had it two days. So she says when he brought her
    in the other night he says, ‘Lemme get rid of that sty for you,’ and she
    says, ‘How?’ and he says, ‘You just lay yourself down acrost the seat of
    that car and I’ll show you.’ So she done it and he popped her neck. Kept
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    Mrs. Freeman said, “she ain’t got no sty. She ain’t got no traces of a sty.”
    “I never heard of that before,” Mrs. Hopewell said.
    “He ast her to marry him before the Ordinary,” Mrs. Freeman went on,
    “and she told him she wasn’t going to be married in no office.”
    “Well, Glynese is a fine girl,” Mrs. Hopewell said. “Glynese and
    Carramae are both fine girls.”
    “Carramae said when her and Lyman was married Lyman said it sure felt
    sacred to him. She said he said he wouldn’t take five hundred dollars for
    being married by a preacher.”
    “How much would he take?” the girl asked from the stove.
    “He said he wouldn’t take five hundred dollars,” Mrs. Freeman repeated.
    “Well we all have work to do,” Mrs. Hopewell said.
    “Lyman said it just felt more sacred to him,” Mrs. Freeman said. “The
    doctor wants Carramae to eat prunes. Says instead of medicine. Says
    them cramps is coming from pressure. You know where I think it is?”
    “She’ll be better in a few weeks,” Mrs. Hopewell said.
    “In the tube,” Mrs. Freeman said. “Else she wouldn’t be as sick as she is.”
    Hulga had cracked her two eggs into a saucer and was bringing them to
    the table along with a cup of coffee that she had filled too full. She sat
    down carefully and began to eat, meaning to keep Mrs. Freeman there by
    questions if for any reason she showed an inclination to leave. She could
    perceive her mother’s eye on her. The first round-about question would
    be about the Bible salesman and she did not wish to bring it on. “How
    did he pop her neck?” she asked.
    Mrs. Freeman went into a description of how he had popped her neck.
    She said he owned a ’55 Mercury but that Glynese said she would rather
    marry a man with only a ’36 Plymouth who would be married by a
    preacher. The girl asked what if he had a ’32 Plymouth and Mrs. Freeman
    said what Glynese had said was a ’36 Plymouth.
    Mrs. Hopewell said there were not many girls with Glynese’s common
    sense. She said what she admired in those girls was their common sense.
    She said that reminded her that they had had a nice visitor yesterday, a
    young man selling Bibles. “Lord,” she said, “he bored me to death but he
    Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor Page 10 of 19
    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03was so sincere and genuine I couldn’t be rude to him. He was just good
    country people, you know,” she said, “—just the salt of the earth.”
    “I seen him walk up,” Mrs. Freeman said, “and then later – I seen him
    walk off,” and Hulga could feel the slight shift in her voice, the slight
    insinuation, that he had not walked off alone, had he? Her face remained
    expressionless but the color rose into her neck and she seemed to swallow
    it down with the next spoonful of egg. Mrs. Freeman was looking at her
    as if they had a secret together.
    “Well, it takes all kinds of people to make the world go ‘round,” Mrs.
    Hopewell said. “It’s very good we aren’t all alike.”
    “Some people are more alike than others,” Mrs. Freeman said.
    Hulga got up and stumped, with about twice the noise that was necessary,
    into her room and locked the door. She was to meet the Bible salesman at
    ten o’clock at the gate. She had thought about it half the night. She had
    started thinking of it as a great joke and then she had begun to see
    profound implications in it. She had lain in bed imagining dialogues for
    them that were insane on the surface but that reached below the depths
    that no Bible salesman would be aware of. Their conversation yesterday
    had been of this kind.
    He had stopped in front of her and had simply stood there. His face was
    bony and sweaty and bright, with a little pointed nose in the center of it,
    and his look was different from what it had been at the dinner table. He
    was gazing at her with open curiosity, with fascination, like a child
    watching a new fantastic animal at the zoo, and he was breathing as if he
    had run a great distance to reach her. His gaze seemed somehow familiar
    but she could not think where she had been regarded with it before. For
    almost a minute he didn’t say anything. Then on what seemed an insuck
    of breath, he whispered, “You ever ate a chicken that was two days old?”
    The girl looked at him stonily. He might have just put this question up
    for consideration at the meeting of a philosophical association. “Yes,” she
    presently replied as if she had considered it from all angles.
    “It must have been mighty small!” he said triumphantly and shook all
    over with little nervous giggles, getting very red in the face, and subsiding
    finally into his gaze of complete admiration, while the girl’s expression
    remained exactly the same.
    “How old are you?” he asked softly.
    She waited some time before she answered. Then in a flat voice she said,
    “Seventeen.”
    Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor Page 11 of 19
    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03His smiles came in succession like waves breaking on the surface of a
    little lake. “I see you got a wooden leg,” he said. “I think you’re real
    brave. I think you’re real sweet.”
    The girl stood blank and solid and silent.
    “Walk to the gate with me,” he said. “You’re a brave sweet little thing and
    I liked you the minute I seen you walk in the door.”
    Hulga began to move forward.
    “What’s your name?” he asked, smiling down on the top of her head.
    “Hulga,” she said.
    “Hulga,” he murmured, “Hulga. Hulga. I never heard of anybody name
    Hulga before. You’re shy, aren’t you, Hulga?” he asked.
    She nodded, watching his large red hand on the handle of the giant valise.
    “I like girls that wear glasses,” he said. “I think a lot. I’m not like these
    people that a serious thought don’t ever enter their heads. It’s because I
    may die.”
    “I may die too,” she said suddenly and looked up at him. His eyes were
    very small and brown, glittering feverishly.
    “Listen,” he said, “don’t you think some people was meant to meet on
    account of what all they got in common and all? Like they both think
    serious thoughts and all?” He shifted the valise to his other hand so that
    the hand nearest her was free. He caught hold of her elbow and shook it a
    little. “I don’t work on Saturday,” he said. “I like to walk in the woods
    and see what Mother Nature is wearing. O’er the hills and far away.
    Picnics and things. Couldn’t we go on a picnic tomorrow? Say yes,
    Hulga,” he said and gave her a dying look as if he felt his insides about to
    drop out of him. He had even seemed to sway slightly toward her.
    During the night she had imagined that she seduced him. 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 deeper understanding of life. She took all his shame
    away and turned it into something useful.
    Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor Page 12 of 19
    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03She set off for the gate at exactly ten o’clock, escaping without drawing
    Mrs. Hopewell’s attention. She didn’t take anything to eat, forgetting that
    food is usually taken on a picnic. She wore a pair of slacks and a dirty
    white shirt, and as an afterthought, she had put some Vapex on the collar
    of it since she did not own any perfume. When she reached the gate no
    one was there.
    She looked up and down the empty highway and had the furious feeling
    that she had been tricked, that he only meant to make her walk to the gate
    after the idea of him. Then suddenly he stood up, very tall, from behind a
    bush on the opposite embankment. Smiling, he lifted his hat which was
    new and wide-brimmed. He had not worn it yesterday and she wondered
    if he had bought it for the occasion. It was toast-colored with a red and
    white band around it and was slightly too large for him. He stepped from
    behind the bush still carrying the black valise. He had on the same suit
    and the same yellow socks sucked down in his shoes from walking. He
    crossed the highway and said, “I knew you’d come!”
    The girl wondered acidly how he had known this. She pointed to the
    valise and asked, “Why did you bring your Bibles?”
    He took her elbow, smiling down on her as if he could not stop. “You can
    never tell when you’ll need the word of God, Hulga,” he said. She had a
    moment in which she doubted that this was actually happening and then
    they began to climb the embankment. They went down into the pasture
    toward the woods. The boy walked lightly by her side, bouncing on his
    toes. The valise did not seem to be heavy today; he even swung it. They
    crossed half the pasture without saying anything and then, putting his
    hand easily on the small of her back, he asked softly, “Where does your
    wooden leg join on?”
    She turned an ugly red and glared at him and for an instant the boy
    looked abashed. “I didn’t mean you no harm,” he said. “I only meant
    you’re so brave and all. I guess God takes care of you.”
    “No,” she said, looking forward and walking fast, “I don’t even believe in
    God.”
    At this he stopped and whistled. “No!” he exclaimed as if he were too
    astonished to say anything else.
    She walked on and in a second he was bouncing at her side, fanning with
    his hat. “That’s very unusual for a girl,” he remarked, watching her out of
    the corner of his eye. When they reached the edge of the wood, he put his
    hand on her back again and drew her against him without a word and
    kissed her heavily.
    Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor Page 13 of 19
    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03The kiss, which had more pressure than feeling behind it, produced that
    extra surge of adrenalin in the girl that enables one to carry a packed trunk
    out of a burning house, but in her, the power went at once to the brain.
    Even before he released her, her mind, clear and detached and ironic
    anyway, was regarding him from a great distance, with amusement but
    with pity. She had never been kissed before and she was pleased to
    discover that it was an unexceptional experience and all a matter of the
    mind’s control. Some people might enjoy drain water if they were told it
    was vodka. When the boy, looking expectant but uncertain, pushed her
    gently away, she turned and walked on, saying nothing as if such
    business, for her, were common enough.
    He came along panting at her side, trying to help her when he saw a root
    that she might trip over. He caught and held back the long swaying
    blades of thorn vine until she had passed beyond them. She led the way
    and he came breathing heavily behind her. Then they came out on a
    sunlit hillside, sloping softly into another one a little smaller. Beyond,
    they could see the rusted top of the old barn where the extra hay was
    stored.
    The hill was sprinkled with small pink weeds. “Then you ain’t saved?”
    he asked suddenly, stopping.
    The girl smiled. It was the first time she had smiled at him at all. “In my
    economy,” she said, “I’m saved and you are damned but I told you I didn’t
    believe in God.”
    Nothing seemed to destroy the boy’s look of admiration. He gazed at her
    now as if the fantastic animal at the zoo had put its paw through the bars
    and given him a loving poke. She thought he looked as if he wanted to
    kiss her again and she walked on before he had the chance.
    “Ain’t there somewheres we can sit down sometime?” he murmured, his
    voice softening toward the end of the sentence.
    “In that barn,” she said.
    They made for it rapidly as if it might slide away like a train. It was a
    large two-story barn, cook and dark inside. The boy pointed up the ladder
    that led into the loft and said, “It’s too bad we can’t go up there.”
    “Why can’t we?” she asked.
    “Yer leg,” he said reverently.
    The girl gave him a contemptuous look and putting both hands on the
    ladder, she climbed it while he stood below, apparently awestruck. She
    Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor Page 14 of 19
    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03pulled herself expertly through the opening and then looked down at him
    and said, “Well, come on if your coming,” and he began to climb the
    ladder, awkwardly bringing the suitcase with him.
    “We won’t need the Bible,” she observed.
    “You never can tell,” he said, panting. After he had got into the loft, he
    was a few seconds catching his breath. She had sat down in a pile of
    straw. A wide sheath of sunlight, filled with dust particles, slanted over
    her. She lay back against a bale, her face turned away, looking out the
    front opening of the barn where hay was thrown from a wagon into the
    loft. The two pink-speckled hillsides lay back against a dark ridge of
    woods. The sky was cloudless and cold blue. The boy dropped down by
    her side and put one arm under her and the other over her and began
    methodically kissing her face, making little noises like a fish. He did not
    remove his hat but it was pushed far enough back not to interfere. When
    her glasses got in his way, he took them off of her and slipped them into
    his pocket.
    The girl at first did not return any of the kisses but presently she began to
    and after she had put several on his cheek, she reached his lips and
    remained there, kissing him again and again as if she were trying to draw
    all the breath out of him. His breath was clear and sweet like a child’s and
    the kisses were sticky like a child’s. He mumbled about loving her and
    about knowing when he first seen her that he loved her, but the
    mumbling was like the sleepy fretting of a child being put to sleep by his
    mother. Her mind, throughout this, never stopped or lost itself for a
    second to her feelings. “You ain’t said you loved me none,” he whispered
    finally, pulling back from her. “You got to say that.”
    She looked away from him off into the hollow sky and then down at a
    black ridge and then down farther into what appeared to be two green
    swelling lakes. She didn’t realize he had taken her glasses but this
    landscape could not seem exceptional to her for she seldom paid any close
    attention to her surroundings.
    “You got to say it,” he repeated. “You got to say you love me.”
    She was always careful how she committed herself. “In a sense,” she
    began, “if you use the word loosely, you might say that. But it’s not a
    word I use. I don’t have illusions. I’m one of those people who see
    through to nothing.”
    The boy was frowning. “You got to say it. I said it and you got to say it,”
    he said.
    The girl looked at him almost tenderly. “You poor baby,” she murmured.
    Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor Page 15 of 19
    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03“It’s just as well you don’t understand,” and she pulled him by the neck,
    face-down, against her. “We are all damned,” she said, “but some of us
    have taken off our blindfolds and see that there’s nothing to see. It’s a
    kind of salvation.”
    The boy’s astonished eyes looked blankly through the ends of her hair.
    “Okay,” he almost whined, “but do you love me or don’tcher?”
    “Yes,” she said and added, “in a sense. But I must tell you something.
    There mustn’t be anything dishonest between us.” She lifted his head
    and looked him in the eye. “I am thirty years old,” she said. “I have a
    number of degrees.”
    The boy’s look was irritated but dogged. “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t
    care a thing about what all you done. I just want to know if you love me
    or don’tcher?” and he caught her to him and wildly planted her face with
    kisses until she said, “Yes, yes.”
    “Okay then,” he said, letting her go. “Prove it.”
    She smiled, looking dreamily out on the shifty landscape. She had
    seduced him without even making up her mind to try. “How?” she asked,
    feeling that he should be delayed a little.
    He leaned over and put his lips to her ear. “Show me where your wooden
    leg joins on,” he whispered.
    The girl uttered a sharp little cry and her face instantly drained of color.
    The obscenity of the suggestion was not what shocked her. As a child she
    had sometimes been subject to feelings of shame but education had
    removed the last traces of that as a good surgeon scrapes for cancer; she
    would no more have felt it over what he was asking than she would have
    believed in his Bible. But she was as sensitive about the artificial leg as a
    peacock about his tail. No one ever touched it but her. She took care of it
    as someone else would his soul, in private and almost with her own eyes
    turned away. “No,” she said.
    “I known it,” he muttered, sitting up. “You’re just playing me for a
    sucker.”
    “On no no!” she cried. “It joins on at the knee. Only at the knee. Why do
    you want to see it?”
    The boy gave her a long penetrating look. “Because,” he said, “it’s what
    makes you different. You ain’t like anybody else.”
    She sat staring at him. There was nothing about her face or her round
    Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor Page 16 of 19
    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03freezing-blue eyes to indicate that this had moved her; but she felt as if
    her heart had stopped and left her mind to pump her blood. She decided
    that for the first time in her life she was face to face with real innocence.
    This boy, with an instinct that came from beyond wisdom, had touched
    the truth about her. When after a minute, she said in a hoarse high voice,
    “All right,” it was like surrendering to him completely. It was like losing
    her own life and finding it again, miraculously, in his.
    Very gently, he began to roll the slack leg up. The artificial limb, in a
    white sock and brown flat shoe, was bound in a heavy material like
    canvas and ended in an ugly jointure where it was attached to the stump.
    The boy’s face and his voice were entirely reverent as he uncovered it and
    said, “Now show me how to take it off and on.”
    She took it off for him and put it back on again and then he took it off
    himself, handling it as tenderly as if it were a real one. “See!” he said
    with a delighted child’s face. “Now I can do it myself!”
    “Put it back on,” she said. She was thinking that she would run away
    with him and that every night he would take the leg off and every
    morning put it back on again. “Put it back on,” she said.
    “Not yet,” he murmured, setting it on its foot out of her reach. “Leave it
    off for awhile. You got me instead.”
    She gave a little cry of alarm but he pushed her down and began to kiss
    her again. Without the leg she felt entirely dependent on him. Her brain
    seemed to have stopped thinking altogether and to be about some other
    function that it was not very good at. Different expressions raced back
    and forth over her face. Every now and then the boy, his eyes like two
    steel spikes, would glance behind him where the leg stood. Finally she
    pushed him off and said, “Put it back on me now.”
    “Wait,” he said. He leaned the other way and pulled the valise toward
    him and opened it. It had a pale blue spotted lining and there were only
    two Bibles in it. He took one of these out and opened the cover of it. It
    was hollow and contained a pocket flask of whiskey, a pack of cards, and
    a small blue box with printing on it. He laid these out in front of her one
    at a time in an evenly-spaced row, like one presenting offerings at the
    shrine of a goddess. He put the blue box in her hand. THIS PRODUCT
    TO BE USED ONLY FOR THE PREVENTION OF DISEASE, she read,
    and dropped it. The boy was unscrewing the top of the flask. He stopped
    and pointed, with a smile, to the deck of cards. It was not an ordinary
    deck but one with an obscene picture on the back of each card. “Take a
    swig,” he said, offering her the bottle first. He held it in front of her, but
    like one mesmerized, she did not move.
    Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor Page 17 of 19
    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03Her voice when she spoke had an almost pleading sound. “Aren’t you,”
    she murmured, “aren’t you just good country people?”
    The boy cocked his head. He looked as if he were just beginning to
    understand that she might be trying to insult him. “Yeah,” he said,
    curling his lip slightly, “but it ain’t held me back none. I’m as good as
    you any day in the week.”
    “Give me my leg,” she said.
    He pushed it farther away with his foot. “Come on now, let’s begin to
    have us a good time,” he said coaxingly. “We ain’t got to know one
    another good yet.”
    “Give me my leg!” she screamed and tried to lunge for it but he pushed
    her down easily.
    “What’s the matter with you all of a sudden?” he asked, frowning as he
    screwed the top on the flask and put it quickly back inside the Bible.
    “You just a while ago said you didn’t believe in nothing. I thought you
    was some girl!”
    Her face was almost purple. “You’re a Christian!” she hissed. “You’re a
    fine Christian! You’re just like them all – say one thing and do another.
    You’re a perfect Christian, you’re…”
    The boy’s mouth was set angrily. “I hope you don’t think,” he said in a
    lofty indignant tone, “that I believe in that crap! I may sell Bibles but I
    know which end is up and I wasn’t born yesterday and I know where I’m
    going!”
    “Give me my leg!” she screeched. He jumped up so quickly that she
    barely saw him sweep the cards and the blue box back into the Bible and
    throw the Bible into the valise. She saw him grab the leg and then she
    saw it for an instant slanted forlornly across the inside of the suitcase with
    a Bible at either side of its opposite ends. He slammed the lid shut and
    snatched up the valise and swung it down the hole and then stepped
    through himself. When all of him had passed but his head, he turned and
    regarded her with a look that no longer had any admiration in it. “I’ve
    gotten a lot of interesting things,” he said. “One time I got a woman’s
    glass eye this way. And you needn’t to think you’ll catch me because
    Pointer ain’t really my name. I use a different name at every house I call
    at and don’t stay nowhere long. And I’ll tell you another thing, Hulga,”
    he said, using the name as if he didn’t think much of it, “you ain’t so
    smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!” and then the
    toast-colored hat disappeared down the hole and the girl was left, sitting
    on the straw in the dusty sunlight. When she turned her churning face
    Good Country People by Flannery O’Connor Page 18 of 19
    http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/oconnorgoodcountry.html 8/4/03toward the opening, she saw his blue figure struggling successfully over
    the green speckled lake.
    Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman, who were in the back pasture, digging
    up onions, saw him emerge a little later from the woods and head across
    the meadow toward the highway. “Why, that looks like that nice dull
    young man that tried to sell me a Bible yesterday,” Mrs. Hopewell said,
    squinting. “He must have been selling them to the Negroes back in there.
    He was so simple,” she said, “but I guess the world would be better off if
    we were all that simple.”
    Mrs. Freeman’s gaze drove forward and just touched him before he
    disappeared under the hill. Then she returned her attention to the evilsmelling
    onion shoot she was lifting from the ground. “Some can’t be that
    simple,” she said. “I know I never could.”

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