Good Country People

Nihilistic Fools Many people idiotically believe they know everything about life; they make up their sets of beliefs and think they are above everyone. Nevertheless, the short story “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor demonstrates how even the most literate nihilistic person can be tricked by the simplest uneducated one. Joy/Hulga discovered that her believe in nothing, was in reality nothing that had rock-solid foundations. People such as Joy/Helga are allowed to go up to a pedestal by all the people who surround them; they allow them to go their own way believing in their own supposed superior values. In the end, an ugly truth shows them they are in reality just as everyone else. Joy Hopewell was injured as a child in a hunting accident, and therefore had to use a wooden leg, this made Joy change her name to Hulga, which according to her mother was the “ugliest name in any language” (O’ Connor 2531). The fact that she had lost a leg made Joy feel completely opposite of what her name was so she decided to change it to what she felt. She considers herself ugly and even her mother makes her feel this way when she is at her presence.
Helga considers herself neither joyful nor hopeful she inclined to live her life in books. She is a highly educated woman this is part of what makes her personality, she has a number of degrees, but she is thirty-two and still living at her mother’s home. Her mother Mrs. Hopewell lives with simple country people, she considers she has to accept all kinds of people because “it takes all kinds to make the world” (2531.) These simple country people are the only company Hulga and Mrs. Hopewell have. In a way this makes Hulga narcissistic, for she thinks there is not one person of her level of intellect, moral beliefs; even in religion, they differ from her. Perhaps the fact that she lost a leg meant that she had not only loss a part of her body, but a part of her humility; she is convinced that she is superior to them and