Good Country People

by

Flannery O’Connor

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Themes and Colors
Class, Identity, and Superiority Theme Icon
Appearances and Realities Theme Icon
Authentic Faith and Vulnerability Theme Icon
Disease and Disability Theme Icon
Hypocrisy Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Good Country People, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Appearances and Realities Theme Icon

The way characters understand other characters in “Good Country People” is often the opposite of how these characters truly are. Moreover, the way characters present themselves in “Good Country People” is often the very opposite of how they are. The title of the story, “Good Country People,” is meant to be read ironically. Both of the characters whom Mrs. Hopewell describes as being “good country people” turn out not to fit that description at all. The Bible Salesman, who claims to identify with the phrase and presents himself as simple and pious, turns out to be an irreverent womanizer, and he steals Hulga’s artificial leg. Mrs. Freeman, meanwhile, is somber, superior, judgmental, and self-centered throughout the story—not simple and kind-hearted, as Mrs. Hopewell assumes. Mrs. Hopewell’s entire idea of “good country people” depends on her self-conception as being superior to those people, and yet in the story it is very clear that Mrs. Hopewell is no more intelligent, sophisticated, or cultured than the other characters. The very phrase “Good Country People” and the way that it defines reality becomes meaningless and suspect.

Hulga is the centerpiece character of the story, and O’Connor uses her exterior and interior lives to comment on the way that looks can be deceiving. Though outwardly a disabled, grumpy, and short-tempered character, her short and absurd tryst with the Bible Salesman, during which O’Connor enters her complicated mind, reveals Hulga to be a person seeking love and acceptance even as she struggles to master her emotions in a world that has often been cruel to her. Further, to entice the Bible Salesman Hulga tries to modify her own appearance, pretending to be younger than she is, never realizing that the Bible Salesman is hiding who he is in a much more fundamental way.

By the end of “Good Country People,” O’Connor literally illustrates the distance between appearance and reality. The Bible Salesman’s valise appears quite early on in the story, and throughout the story both the characters and we, as readers, believe that it contains Bibles. In fact, at the end of the story the man opens the valise up to reveal just two Bibles, one of which is actually hollow and contains alcohol, playing cards, and pornography. The man who seemed innocent and harmless suddenly becomes a villain, and Hulga must not only deal with the loss of her leg but also the fact that her conception of her own superior intelligence is not as definitive as she had believed.

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Appearances and Realities ThemeTracker

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Appearances and Realities Quotes in Good Country People

Below you will find the important quotes in Good Country People related to the theme of Appearances and Realities.
Good Country People Quotes

The reason for her keeping them so long was that they were not trash. They were good country people.

Related Characters: Mrs. Hopewell, Mrs. Freeman
Page Number: 272
Explanation and Analysis:

“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 forward, would reply, ‘If you want me, here I am—LIKE I AM.”

Related Characters: Hulga Hopewell (Joy) (speaker), Mrs. Hopewell (speaker)
Page Number: 274
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Mrs. Hopewell
Page Number: 274
Explanation and Analysis:

Mrs. Hopewell was certain that she had thought and 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.

Related Characters: Hulga Hopewell (Joy), Mrs. Hopewell
Related Symbols: The Artificial Leg
Page Number: 274
Explanation and Analysis:

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…

Related Characters: Hulga Hopewell (Joy)
Related Symbols: The Artificial Leg
Page Number: 275
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Mrs. Hopewell (speaker), Hulga Hopewell (Joy), The Bible Salesman
Page Number: 278
Explanation and Analysis:

“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 to her unfriendly face. “People like you don’t like to fool with country people like me!”

Related Characters: The Bible Salesman (speaker), Mrs. Hopewell
Page Number: 278
Explanation and Analysis:

“Lord,” she said, “he bored me to death but he was 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.”

Related Characters: Mrs. Hopewell (speaker), Mrs. Freeman, The Bible Salesman
Page Number: 282
Explanation and Analysis:

“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.”

Related Characters: The Bible Salesman (speaker), Hulga Hopewell (Joy)
Page Number: 284
Explanation and Analysis:

“I don’t have illusions. I’m one of those people who see through to nothing.”

Related Characters: Hulga Hopewell (Joy) (speaker), The Bible Salesman
Page Number: 287
Explanation and Analysis:

“I am thirty years old,” she said. “I have a number of degrees.”

Related Characters: Hulga Hopewell (Joy) (speaker), The Bible Salesman
Page Number: 288
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Hulga Hopewell (Joy), The Bible Salesman
Related Symbols: The Artificial Leg
Page Number: 289
Explanation and Analysis:

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 . . . It was not an ordinary deck but one with an obscene picture on the back of each card.

Related Characters: Hulga Hopewell (Joy), The Bible Salesman
Related Symbols: The Bible Salesman’s Valise
Page Number: 289
Explanation and Analysis:

“You’re just like them all—say one thing and do another. You’re a perfect Christian, you’re . . .”

Related Characters: Hulga Hopewell (Joy) (speaker), The Bible Salesman
Page Number: 290
Explanation and Analysis:

“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.”

Related Characters: The Bible Salesman (speaker), Hulga Hopewell (Joy)
Page Number: 291
Explanation and Analysis:

“You ain’t so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!”

Related Characters: The Bible Salesman (speaker), Hulga Hopewell (Joy)
Page Number: 291
Explanation and Analysis:

“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 there. He was so simple,” she said, “but I guess the world would be better off if we were all that simple.”

Related Characters: Mrs. Hopewell (speaker), Mrs. Freeman, The Bible Salesman
Page Number: 291
Explanation and Analysis: