Relationships in Good Country People, by Flannery OConnor Essay

Flannery OConnors total orbit People is a history told through the examination of the relationships amidst the quaternion main characters. All of the characters have distinct feelings about the others, from misapprehend to contempt. Both Joy-Hulga, the protagonist, and Manley cursor, the antagonist, are multi-faceted characters. While all of the characters have different levels of complexity, Joy-Hulga and Manley Pointer are the deepest and the ones with the most obvious facades. The first character we encounter is Mrs. Freeman. She is the married woman of Mrs. Hopewells tenant farmer. She is a very outspoken woman, and she can never be brought to tackle herself wrong on any point (OConnor 180). Mrs. Freeman is a rumormonger she is nosy and she has a special fondness for the details of secret infections, vague deformities, assaults upon children (OConnor 183). Mrs. Freeman wants to be an authority on everyone elses personal business. She is never diffident of sharing the details of her daughters lives with Mrs. Hopewell. I get the impression that she tells anyone that she meets the intimate details of the lives of Glynese, Carramae, Mrs. Hopewell, and Joy-Hulga. Being a poor tenant farmers wife, her only weapon is her legal transfer (Enjoiras 36). In order to compete with Mrs. Hopewell, she must be constantly on the look-out for focal points to subtly one-up her in the course of their conversations. Asals describes their conversations as hackneyed one-upmanship (99). For example, the way they speak to each other one rnorning goes like this Everybody is different, Mrs. Hopewell said. Yes, most plenty is, Mrs. Freeman said. It takes all kinds to make the world. I always said it did myself.... ...f the story proves it. The facades they put on are as essential to Good Country People as the mindless conversations between Mrs. Freeman and Mrs. Hopewell. The relationships between these four characters are what make Good Countr y People such a literary success. Works Cited Asals, Frederick. Flannery OConnor The Imagination of Extremity. University of Georgia Press Reissue edition. Athens, Georgia, 2007. Enjolras, Laurence. Flannery OConnors Characters. refreshed York University Press of America, Inc., 1998. Feeley, Kathleen, S.S.N.D. Flannery OConnor Voice of the Peacock. New York Fordham University Press 2 edition, 2010. OConnor, Flannery. The Complete Stories. thirty-seventh printing. New York Noonday Press, 1994. Whitt, Margaret Earley. Understanding Flannery OConnor. University of South Carolina Press, 1997.