The Grotesque Missionary:
Recognizing Transformation and Salvation in Flannery O’Connor’s
“Good Country People”
Flannery O’Connor is best known for her eccentric writing style laced with
grotesque images. Her short story “Good Country People” is no exception
and in fact, is the primary focus of many literary critiques. Many critics argue
that O’Connor uses symbolism all throughout her short stories to reflect her
strong Christian values. In particular, the description of the characters in
O’Connor’s short story “Good Country People” is highly detailed with a
lot of focus on their physical as well as mental features. Most every character in
the short story has some sort of personal flaw that O’Connor uses to reveal a
characteristic or value in that character, and its relationship to Christianity.
Through the grotesque images of her characters, O’Connor is able to awaken
the soul of the reader so that he or she might experience a catharsis or
cleansing after her readings and ultimately realize their need for Christ in their
own lives.
Background:
The Norton Anthology of Literature, Shorter 10th edition, gives brief
autobiographical information on Flannery O’Connor: “O’Connor’s career
was short, hampered by her struggles with lupus, but her accomplishments
were considerable: She died at thirty-nine, having published some thirty-one
stories and two novels, as well as numerous essays and reviews “ (294). The
authors of the anthology go on to state that it is important to take
O’Connor’s suffering in her own life into consideration when reading her
works. By analyzing the biographical information of the author, we gain insight
into the lives of the characters in his or her work, which all seem to be suffering
from a deformity of some sort. The anthology also gives characteristics of
O’Connor’s work that are important to understanding “Good Country
People” such as dramatic and situational irony as well as figures of speech and
imagery. For example, “Hulga’s plan to seduce the Bible salesman leads to
an ironic reversal of the situation, bringing a number of surprises for her and
the reader” (299) which is an example of situational irony. The text argues that
the characters in O’Connor’s stories reach a point of transformation that is
also experienced by the reader “But even more, we know an O’Connor story
by the dryly humorous distance her narrators maintain from all characters, the
often violent harm characters do to one another, the belated revelation that
destroys a character’s pride in knowing more than others-the commandment,
in a sense, to awaken before we meet eternal damnation” (299).
Sacred Suffering:
In his article “Suffering and the Sacred in Flannery O’Connor’s Short
Stories”, David Leigh discusses the parallel between the suffering that
characters in O’Connor’s short stories experience and O’Connor’s strong
faith in Jesus Christ. He argues that because of O’Connor’s devout Catholic
faith, she uses the character’s in her short stories to reflect the same sort of
suffering that Christ experienced by leaving heaven and coming to earth to die
for the sins of the world. By doing this, he claims O’Connor shows redemption
through her characters and allows readers to experience a deep awakening in
their own faith.
Using examples from nearly all of O’Connor’s short stories, Leigh examines
principle characters in the stories and the type of transformation they make, if
any, as a result of their suffering. In relation to O’Connor’s “Good Country
People”, Leigh uses the example of both Manley Pointer, the Bible salesman,
and Joy-Hulga, the young crippled girl who is an atheist, to demonstrate the
partial transformation experienced by Joy-Hulga with the loss of her leg. Davis
also makes the argument in his article that O’Connor uses suffering and
transformation in her short stories as a demonstration of purgatory when he
states “In all these cases of purgatorial suffering, the characters in the short
story have not reached a complete realization of themselves and their relation
to others and to God. They have only begun coming to a painful consciousness
of their blindness or biases. However, because they have begun a process of
turning toward the light, they are in a situation similar to what O’Connor
believed about persons in Purgatory” (Leigh 377).
In a more specific sense, Kate Oliver addresses in her article
“O’Connor’s Good Country People “ the suffering of Joy-Hulga’s
physical ailments in relationship to her spiritual shortcomings. She argues
“Joy-Hulga’s physical afflictions--her heart condition, her poor eyesight, and
her artificial leg--symbolize her emotional, intellectual, and spiritual
impairments” (Oliver 233). Oliver goes on to elaborate on each of the
physical impairments and how they symbolize a spiritual shortcoming. For
example she states that Joy-Hulga’s weak heart symbolizes a lack of
emotional connection to herself and others. She credits the lack of emotion to
Joy-Hulga’s hunting accident when she was ten and claims that at that point
she “emotionally died”. Joy-Hulga’s eyesight reflects her intelligence but
also her blindness to reality. Oliver states “However, eyeglasses also reflect
Joy-Hulga’s intelligence, as she possesses a PH.D. in philosophy. But she is
blind to reality, having knowledge only of books and abstract ideas, rather than
of people and concrete objects” (233). Oliver also argues that Joy-Hulga’s
artificial leg also represents her artificial faith and is the reason that she sees
everything as “nothingness”. Oliver states that Joy-Hulga’s physical and
spiritual ailments are a deliberate rejection of faith and are the reasons the
character suffers to the point of a partial transformation but is left with an
overwhelming sense of loneliness and dependency (233).
Criticism:
All three interpretations of O’Connor’s “Good Country People” generally
agree on the same things. For one, the writers of the anthology along with
Oliver and Leigh conclude that O’Connor uses symbolism in her texts. Not
only does O’Connor use traditional symbolism techniques such as irony and
metaphors, but her characters themselves are very symbolic. As Leigh states in
his article, “Flannery O’ Connor in her essays and letters makes it clear that
she is writing stories from a framework of Catholic theologian assumptions, but
that she is also creating stories that must be read symbolically in order to
interpret how the manners in these stories reveal the mystery in accord with
her assumptions” (Leigh 365). The three interpretations of the text also agree
that there is a reason that O’Connor uses symbolism in her short story and
that reason has to do with her faith. Being a devout Catholic, O’Connor
placed a high importance on winning souls to Christ by whichever means she
could, and she had the talent to write. By orchestrating her characters and their
distinct features, O’Connor is able to reveal spiritual shortcomings through
physical suffering.
Though all three interpretations provide a solid, well-supported thesis
about the short story “Good Country People”, the authors fail to provide
adequate reasoning behind their assumptions that the characters within the
story complete any sort of transformation. They simply state a transformative
process occurs but argue not all characters go through this transformation and
the reason for that has to do with human nature and choice. For instance, take
the character of Joy-Hulga. As described in Oliver’s article, Hulga had many
health conditions that limited her physically. She had a weak heart, poor
eyesight, and has a missing a leg. However, she also suffered from poor mental
and emotional health. Because she felt so bad about herself and her life, she
legally got her name changed from her birth name of Joy to the name Hulga.
Later in the story, when Joy-Hulga is almost raped by the Bible salesmen, we
see Joy-Hulga openly vulnerable for the first time. In the loft with the Bible
salesmen, she reveals her wooden leg and removes her glasses (322).
However, even when the Bible salesmen proves to be completely different than
what both the reader and Joy-Hula assumes him to be, never do we witness an
actual change in the attitude of Joy-Hulga. She is left vulnerable and alone at
the end of the story but an actual change an actual change never occurs . The
text shifts to a scene with Mrs. Hopewell in the garden farming with Mrs..
Freeman and the story ends. Critics argue that Joy-Hulga undergoes a partial
transformation at this point in the text but going off of the text in
O’Connor’s work, that assumption is not apparent.
The reason we never witness a change in Joy-Hulga is that Flannery
O’Connor left it up to the reader to make a change in his or her own life
based on the experience of Joy-Hulga. This is where critics differ. The difference
is that they assume the transformation has solely to do with the character and
ultimately inspires the reader to consider redemption in his or her own life. In
reality, we never get to witness the change in her characters and are left with
the decision of transformation left up to us. With her use of a third person
narration, the reader is able to witness the full suffering of Joy-Hulga without
the misconceptions associated with a first person narration. Flannery
O’Connor intended the reader to be the one to experience a transformation
in Christ, not her characters, and that is the reason she uses so much
symbolism. O’Connor was extremely religious and wanted her readers to not
only experience Christ’s suffering but basically go through the crucifixion,
burial, and resurrection for themselves. Joy-Hulga’s experience is full of
suffering that she did not bring on herself. Her missing leg, poor eyesight, and
weak heart were all circumstances she could not help. She suffered the most
because of a hunting accident that was someone else’s mistake, not her own.
Her suffering directly parallels to the suffering of Christ in that Christ suffered
crucifixion for the sins of the world that he did not commit, rather than sins of
his own. Instead of using her suffering to better herself for the greater good,
Joy-Hulga spiritually dies. She changes her name and refuses to move past the
fact that she is limited by her physical impairments. In relation to the death and
burial of Christ, Joy-Hulga spiritually dies yet her body remains whereas Christ
physically died; yet his spirit remained. The interesting aspect about the end of
“Good Country People” is that though we witness the death and burial of
both Joy-Hulga and that of Christ, we do not see an ascension or redemption
in her character. O’Connor leaves that up to the reader just as Christ left the
decision to receive salvation up to us.
Transformative Salvation:
“Good Country People” is more than anything a representation of salvation.
The transformative process happens in the life of the reader, not the character.
Critics argue that the suffering in the characters lives ultimately ends in
transformation for some and not for others. However, suffering is not biased
among characters in “Good Country People” just as it is not biased in real
life. It shows no discrimination. Christ’s love is also unconditional and shows
no discrimination. It is open to anyone who is willing to receive it. In a symbolic,
grotesque way, Flannery O’Connor is able to offer the plan of salvation to her
readers so that they might be forgiven, transformed, and made new in the
body of Christ.
Works Cited
Biographical: "The Author's Work: Flannery O'Connor." 2010. Shorter
Tenth
Edition. Comp. Allison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. 10th ed.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. 294-99. Print.
Leigh, Davis J. "Suffering And The Sacred In Flannery O'connor's Short
Stories." Renascence 65.5 (2013): 365-380. Academic Search Premier.
Web. 12 Apr. 2014.
Oliver, Kate. "O'Connor's Good Country People." The Explicator 62.4
(2004): 233+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 12 Apr. 2014.
O'Connor, Flannery. "Good Country People." The Norton Introduction to
Literature. Comp. Allison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. 10th ed. New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. 1-1844. Print.