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April 02, 2006
O'Connor, '''Good Country People'' -- Jerz: American Lit II (EL 267)
"Woman! do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!"
Hulga asks the question that reverberates throughout O'Connor's works. And again we have an intelligent/ignorant "child" needing some serious guidance. I seem to think also that there is always one parent of some type rather than two. It reminds me of how every Disney story requires the mother to be absent. I've often thought that many of the events would not take place if there were a balanced family system. Not to say at all that single parent famillies are unbalanced in any way, but that O'Connor perhaps uses this as another "deformity".
Posted by JenniferDiFulvio at April 2, 2006 08:48 PM
Comments
Jennifer,
Interesting point however, I could hardly call Hulga a girl at alone ignorant. She does seem to be snobbish and depressed. she also did do a stupid thing by climbing to the top loft and then the "Bible" salesman takes her only means to get around. In today's society people do the same thing in a different light. But using God to deceive people is disgusting.
Posted by: LisaRandolph at April 3, 2006 10:35 AM
Good observations Jennifer. Although Bailey and his cabbaged face wife were both parents to their children, the mother was not named and is really a non-entity with her broken shoulder and inability to prevent her children from being MURDERED. Poor little Bevel's parents were a couple of drunks who couldn't seem to crawl out the bottle long enough to see that he ate regularly. But you are right about the lack of a cohesive, traditional family-think of Lucynell, Jr., the Child (A Temple of the Holy Ghost), Nelson and the Child from "A Circle in the Fire". I think a whole comparison/contrast paper could be done on the Mother figures in all of these short stories, and they would all be more alike than different. When you mention Disney, I think of kids in general love stories about young people in danger who save themselves by outsmarting adults. It's a real sign of growing maturity when a child wants to assert his/her own intelligence and not take whatever is dished to them by adults as gospel.
Posted by: Brenda Christeleit at April 3, 2006 12:24 PM