Flannery O'Connor is the brightest representative of the Southern Gothic style in American literature. Her prose is filled with violence, erupting evil and dark features of the human, and many stories end with the note of horror. Although O’Connor stated Gogol was her favorite writer, many critics saw Kafka’s significant influence in many of her works (Robert DiYanni 185). O’Connor’s works are filled with the shades of violence, since the author herself mentioned: “I realized that violence, oddly enough, brings my heroes back to reality ...” (Tine Snow, 286). Despite the fact that she did not want to separate the spiritual and material sources, she said that the “supernatural” is always remaining vivid and obvious under certain conditions. At the same time she often placed her heroes in paradoxical, deliberately hypertrophied situations, precisely between the two worlds: the world of the real and the unreal (Robert DiYanni 185). As a result, in the works of O'Connor, realism is inextricably intertwined with oddities, quirks, grotesque, absurdity, deformity, distortions and madness, and the decisive role is often played by people's faith in God, and Christian mysticism (anagoge, revelations and insights) (Tine Snow, 286). Good Country people is a famous novel of the writer, written in the style of Southern Gothic literature. Thesis: The image of the main characters of the work Good Country People tells about the platitudes and life of people, living in the world full of easy clichés, nihilism, ignorance and banalities.
The major characters of the novel are trivial people from tenant farm in Georgia, who have their own way of life, rules and principles, based on which they live and judge others. The manner, in which O’Connor depicts the life of her characters, proves that these people are so locked in their small insignificant worlds, that they are afraid to look beyond the boundaries, because of the fear to make mistakes and change their usual flow of lives. The characters are so filled with banalities and lack of desire to change their lives, that are remain in the status of simply good country people throughout their lives. The characters from O’Connor’s novel do not dare to step away from the trivial and usual circle of life, so they are easier to follow the rules and guidelines of others instead of daring to make their own mistakes and learn on them: “Some people might enjoy drain water if they were told it was vodka” (O’Connor 198).
One of the characters is Mrs. Hopewell, whose life is depicted by O'Connor shows as the one, governed by the positive however empty sayings: "Nothing is perfect” (O’Connor, 194). It was one of Mrs. Hopewell's favorite sayings, while another states: that is life!” These words show that Mrs. Hopewell is not even trying to go deep into details and break the trivial circle of her vision of the world and reality. Her statements and mottos of life are so indistinct and obvious, that they become almost meaningless, apart from, perhaps, to convey an overall philosophy of acceptance the surroundings and unwillingness to look out of the box. That fact that she is unable to distinguish these thoughts as clichés demonstrates that she is far from self development and reflection on her own beliefs.
Another character of the novel is Hulga, the protagonist. She is well-educated woman, who has no other life experience except reading and writing, so she sees life from the books and thoughts of the authors, whom she reads. As a result of lack of practical life skills, Hulga has a hard time dealing with other people. This girl is closed in her own world and does not know life, however, it does not prevent her from considering herself a genius and better than the rest of people. Hulga prefers to imagine herself as higher than everyone in the country as well as being above her mother's platitudes. However, her systematical actions against her mother’s words and will make her look as thoughtless and trite as the careless sayings of her mother. Hulga is so preoccupied with her education, science and books that she completely forgets about the necessity to learn people. Her further relations with Pointer demonstrate her levity and lack of life experience. Hulga hates her mother, but she even cannot imagine that the meeting with Pointer will teach her how to become more objective, wise and stop thinking that people are trivial (DiYanni 235). It is a lesson for Hulga that people are different and it is necessary to look beyond one’s boundaries in order to live a life, full of emotions and joy.
The culmination of the story highlights that Mrs. Hopewell has not changed. When seeing Pointer walking across the field, she refuses to think about anything unusual about his behavior. She supposes that “he must have been selling them (bibles) to the Negroes back in there” (O’Connor 205) and turns to do her usual things. It demonstrates that Mrs. Hopewell remains as ignorant and indifferent to the things around her, as she was at the beginning of the novel. Despite the power of God, seen in all the works of Flannery O’Connor, Good Country People is a demonstration that being far from religion is not always bad for people (Feeley, 236). On the example of Hulga and pointer, who are atheists, O’Connor shows that lack of faith does not prevent them from leading their lives. Moreover, faithless life makes them ignorant and indifferent to the surroundings (Feeley, 236).
Conclusion
Good Country People is the story about people, whose boundaries of thinking prevent them from development and seeing the reality of the world. Both characters, which have been analyzed in the paper, are demonstrations of deep indifference, excessive simplicity and triviality and lives full of insignificant clichés, platitudes and ignorance that do not allow them to gain necessary life experience.
Works Cited
DiYanni, Robert. Essays from O’Connor in the Literature; Reading fiction, poetry and drama. NY: McGraw Hill. 2007, pp. 232 – 234
DiYanni, Robert. “On ‘Good Country People’” by Kathleen Feeley in the Literature; Reading fiction, poetry and drama. NY: McGraw Hill. 2007, p. 236
DiYanni, Robert. “Flannery O’Connor in Context” by Robert DiYanni in the Literature; Reading fiction, poetry and drama. NY: McGraw Hill. 2007, pp. 184 – 187.
Tine Snow, Ollye. “The Functional Gothic Of Flannery O'Connor”, Southwest Review
Vol. 50, No. 3 (1965), pp. 286-299
O’Connor, Flannery. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories. NJ: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1992.
