“Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor is a story about the illusion of faith and knowledge. Throughout the story, O’Connor warns the reader to not be eluded by the education system and the media’s definition of knowledge and “rational thinking”. She tells the reader that believing in God is not a bad thing, and people that preach against God can be unpredictable. She says that whether you are religious or not, conforming to Christian morals is a good thing that keeps everybody safe. Non-believers sometimes refuse to conform to society’s Christian morals. Due to their lack of morals, non-religious people can be unsafe. She uses the illusion of faith and the illusion of knowledge to compare very different and very similar characters in the story. In the end, those who are eluded by knowledge sometimes choose to not conform to the standard Christian morals that society has put in place that keeps everyone safe. At the same time, those eluded by faith are blind to see the warning signs right in front of their eyes.

Mrs. Hopewell is the owner of a farm in her town who hired the help of Mrs. Freeman. The two of them work the farm and gossip about petty things. Mrs. Hopewell’s daughter Joy (her legal name is Hulga, but her mother still calls her joy) is a pessimistic nihilist. When she was young she lost one of her legs in a hunting accident. She changed her name from Joy to Hulga when she turned 21 out of spite to her mother. She went to college and studied philosophy. She wishes to teach at university’s after she gets her Ph.D. but she cannot because of a heart condition. She is only predicted to live another ten years and must live with her mother. Anytime her mother or Mrs. Freeman mentioned life or other people Joy is filled with “constant rage” (O’Connor 1). Joy finally shows signs of opening-up to a bible salesman, named Manly Pointer, that supposedly has a heart condition that is like Joy’s. Manly ends up taking Hulga on a date in the woods where they talk about life. They then start getting intimate. Manly opens his hollow bible and reveals that he keeps whiskey and condoms in his bible. Hulga is shocked and no longer in the mood. Manly takes her glasses and her wooden leg and leaves her alone. As Manly is leaving, Mrs. Hopewell acknowledges that he is being a good boy and thinks that he is going to help the homeless. In the end Hulga is left alone with nothing and Mrs. Hopewell thinks that Manly is a good person, of course until her hinds out what happened to Hulga.

In the story, there is an illusion of faith that all the characters share in one way or another. Hulga’s nihilist attitude and resentment of faith foreshadows her misfortune with Manly Pointer. The idea that she will open-up to someone that is like herself makes sense to most people. People feel the most connected to people that they share common and ideals and goals with. But this illusion of compatibility is predictable. What Hulga does not understand about Manly, a true nihilist, is that Manly does not believe in the moral consequences of doing harm to other people. Hulga and Manly both believe that in the end nothing matters at all. If nothing matters to a person, what is stopping either of them from doing something that a conformist would view as “wrong”? Nothing, there is no way to assume that a person that does not conform to a moral belief will do what is “morally right”. Therefore, Manly Pointer and Hulga are both wild-cards in the story. Hulga’s illusion is justifiable. Manly lured her in using his non-believing ideals.

In a study, a group of scientists told a group of people that a certain placebo drug was working to treat an illness. The group was educated and was strongly convinced that the drug worked. The group was then told to examine a group of people that were taking the placebo drug along with a drug that worked. The group had a very hard time believing that the real drug worked. (Yarritu, Matute and Luque). This study can help us understand how easily Hulga was fooled into trusting Manly. Although the family is not full of “practicing Christians”, they still practice the moral values of Christianity.  Hulga has been exposed to people abiding by the same set of morals her entire life regardless of their religion. This is like saying that Hulga is strongly convinced that people act and treat each other based on the same set of morals, which can be represented by the placebo drug. Manly represents the group being examined. He appears to follow the same moral values as other people that she is surrounded by. But, he has different morals. The study shows how Hulga is going to have a hard time understanding his different morals, and how she rejects that his “morals” are morals at all. She has been exposed to that same set of morals for so long that she is easily fooled by Manly. At first, she thinks that she understands him and that he understands her, but she doesn’t understand him at all. Her “doxastic” morals interfere with her ability to rationalize the thoughts and tendencies of a true nihilist (Sylvan 1).

The same can be said about Mrs. Hopewell. This story is not only about not trusting non-believers, it is also about how you should not trust people you do not know well. She knows what the stereotypical “bible boy” is like and she assumes that Manly is just like the rest of them. Mrs. Hopewell is very easily fooled by manly and his hidden personality. He appears to have the same personality as someone that goes to church every day and always “does the right thing” in their Christian society. Mrs. Hopewell is heavily convinced that bible-salesmen are good people. So, when she sees Manly she has no suspicion at all that he could be a bad person. Mrs. Hopewell should have known better. She must know that she cannot trust someone that she does not know well. Just as it is unsafe to fully trust a nihilist, it is fully unsafe to trust anyone that you have never met before. But, sometimes it is hard to tell is someone is a good person or not. In this way, it seems like the story is saying that no one should be trusted. I think that it is saying that some people are easier to trust than others, but you should always be careful who you trust, because some people’s intentions can be bad, and you may not expect it. With that said, I am not saying that all non-believers are bad and all believers are good. People that identify as believers can do terrible things too, but usually in those situations the “believer” is not abiding by his faith. 

When Manly Pointer seduced Hulga she was fully aware of his moral and spiritual beliefs. Manly is a wild card, Manly is a nihilist, which means that he believes that nothing has meaning and that there is nothing after life and there are no moral implications for any of his actions. This means that Manly does not believe that there is anything that he could do that would matter at the end of his life. This is dangerous because a person like Hulga, who thinks that she is a true nihilist, will have a perceived illusion of trust in Manly because she thinks they think the same way, but in reality they think very differently. A person like Hulga, who grew up in a nice town in the Bible Belt in the 1930’s, would have a very hard time recognizing what it means to be a true nihilist. Hulga grew up and was taught to be a good person, like most people. But, “human humility” is defined in a way that is “constant with the traditional religious faith” (McWilliams). In other words, good values and ideals are and have always been defined by religion. Somebody that truly does not believe in what the religion stands for would be unpredictable, and would act unpredictably. Many non-believers could have different morals. A moral set of non-believers is defined by the way that they view life. A non-believer sets his own moral values, which is not always a bad thing but it can be unpredictable. Non-believers can feel like they are closer with each other than they are with believers but that is not always the case. A non-believers mentality has an infinite number of possibilities. Some can be closer and some can be much further apart. Manly’s nihilism should have been a red flag for Hulga, but like most non-believers, she did not recognize their differences. 

Hulga recognizes that everywhere she goes there is a religious influence that affects the environment and the people she is with, but she does not recognize that it is also affecting her in a positive way. Most people in society conform to the Christian moral values that shape what society views as good and bad. Non-believers often end up following the same moral beliefs as Christians because the Christian’s moral values are the ones that laws were formed around. The founding fathers of the country recognized that Christian morals keep everybody safe and they decided to base the laws of the country around them. This shows that the Christian morals work for the most part in keeping the majority of the people happy and safe. This also shows that society in general is relatively religious. If they were not, they probably would not have gotten away with creating laws based around Christian morals. All practicing Christians conform to these values because they believe that behaving in a way that is good to God will grant them entrance to heaven, a Christian’s life-long goal. Most atheists also conform to these behavioral guidelines without even knowing it, because people that follow these guidelines are usually seen as good people, but there is nothing stopping them from acting differently. Also, atheists often conform to these standards of living because these are the standards in society that shaped todays laws. We live in a society that recognized that Christian morals keep everyone safe and happy enough to base laws around the Christian morals. Hulga should have been more hesitant to trust Manly.

Hulga looks down on other people that do not have the same beliefs as her. She is convinced that other people’s thoughts and beliefs do not have any warrant unless they are as educated as her. In Hulga’s perspective, her education gives her ideological authority. Thus, Hulga looks down on religious people and views them as uneducated. People that are highly educated very often view religious people as “irrational” (Russello, Beckwith and Stark). Believing in religion is often viewed as having “irrational” logic, whereas philosophy and atheism is practiced by “logical” thinkers. People like Hulga do not believe in religion because there is a lack of physical proof. This standard of thinking is taught in today’s education system.  Hulga represents the modern-day “logical” thinker.

In Flannery O’Connor’s story ‘Good Country People’, Hulga was deceived and fooled by the social implications of faith. Her life was changed dramatically after the hunting accident when she lost her leg. Her peg-leg is used in the story to symbolize her resentment toward religion. People that go through particularly hard times sometimes second guess their religious beliefs. They wonder why their religious figure could not help them in their time of need. This causes them to question or even lose their faith in the end. Hulga started to resent religion at a young age, after the hunting accident, because she did not think that she deserved to lose her leg. Her leg represents her faith in god and when she lost it she could never get it back. Instead, it was replaced by a woken leg that represents how her faith let her down. 

After she lost her leg she decided to go to school and get a degree in philosophy. She feels that a degree in philosophy will give her an excuse to look down on the believers and give her a perception of knowledge. This is controversial for the time because in her era, girls did not usually go to school. They usually stayed at home and took care of their family. On top of that, she was studying a very controversial subject. Philosophy is the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct. In other words, a main part of philosophy is to question religion and the meaning of life, which is what makes it so controversial. In the time that Hulga lived and the place she was living, everybody was Christian for the most part, and it was looked down upon to be anything else. Everyone trusted eachother because everyone assumed that everyone has the same views of live and everyone assumed that everyone was a “good Christian person". Philosophy was not praised as a practice in the “Bible Belt” during the 1950’s. Hulga is appealed to the study of philosophy due to her resentment of faith. Hulga’s glasses represent her education and her perceived clarity. 

At the end of the story Manly lured Hulga into the woods where they began to kiss. The glasses were getting in the way so he took them off. Manly pulled out his bible that was hallowed out and full of whiskey and condoms and offers some to Hulga. Hulga does not want any and she is confused. Then Manly wants to see her peg-leg and where is connects. She reluctantly accepts to show him but she does not want to. Manly takes off her leg and looks at where it connects and Hulga is not pleased. Hulga is no longer in the mood. When manly realizes this, he gets up and leaves, taking Hulga’s glasses and peg-leg with him. This is symbolic to Hulga and her state of mind. Manly takes away her peg-leg, which symbolizes her hatred toward religion and religious people. He also takes away her glasses, which symbolizes her education, that gives her reason to look down on other people and gives her reason to be a non-believer. Without her materialistic things that she uses to define herself, she is left to wonder who she really is. At the end of the day, Hulga does not know why Manly did this to her. If only she did not resent the religion and ideals of the believers, then she would not have been fooled into thinking that Manly was a good person because he was a non-believer. If only she could see that believers are only trying to do what they think is right, then she would not have despised her family, and perhaps she would be living a happy life. But instead she is left in the woods with nothing, cold and alone. 

This story is a cautionary tale about a stubborn girl in a Christian society. O’Connor is urging people to recognize Christianity’s influence in society and to let them know that without Christian morals the world would be full of unpredictable people. Whether you believe in the religion or not, you should understand the possible intentions of a true nihilist. Not all are bad, like Hulga, but some are unpredictable. You should not assume that a non-believer will have the same morals as a believer. This story also reminds non-believers that they need to be good people too. A lot of non-believers resent Christianity, but O’Connor is trying to remind those people that conforming to the moral values of society keeps everyone safe. This story symbolizes trust and illusions. It is very easy to be fooled by somebody you think you can trust. But some people have bad intentions that you don’t expect. 

 