Flannery O Connor's Grotesque in Good Country People Essay Example

📌Category: Literature
📌Words: 894
📌Pages: 4
📌Published: 30 April 2022

Flannery O’Connor is a writer who is known for her disturbing and shocking stories. As an author whose style is described as ‘southern gothic’, O’Connor tells stories primarily set in the south with a focus on its grotesque aspects. Her characters can be regarded as grotesque in a physical or psychological way. Her most interesting use of grotesque can be found in the psychological state and morality of her characters. O’Connor holds an unparalleled affinity to take southern stereotypes and social expectations and distort them so wildly that the line between who the real monsters of her stories are becomes extremely blurred. The best example of this is seen in her short story “Good Country People”. Every central character in the story is shown to violate the cultural expectations of their lifestyle in one way or another and have a twisted sense of morality or spirituality. O’Connor utilizes the grotesque in her stories to disfigure spirituality and highlight deep flaws in Southern culture in her works.

Mrs. Freeman, a woman who is characterized as nosy, has an innate fascination with ‘the details of secret infections, hidden deformities, assaults upon children.’ (O’Connor 5.) She takes great pleasure in hearing Hulga recount the details of her leg being shot off, including even the horrific detail of how she remained conscious through the entire ordeal. Mrs. Hopewell is deeply disappointed in her daughter notably for being an Atheist. But she herself lies to the salesman about where her bible is located, revealing it is not on her bedside but in the attic implying she hasn’t opened or read it in a significant amount of time. The depiction of the nosy neighbor, fascinated by every macabre detail of the most disgusting events is considered grotesque in the South yet also an extremely common behavior. O’Connor was quoted as stating ‘Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.”

Hulga is meant to trick the reader into falsely assuming she is the most grotesque character in the story. O’Connor said in an interview in 1960, “Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly a penchant have for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.” (Jasmine 2019). ‘Good Country People’ is full of traditional and not so traditional freaks. The visual freak is Hulga. Hulga is physically regarded as a freak due to her missing her leg and disability. O’Connor in her life suffered from systemic lupus erythematosus, a disease that attacks one’s immune system. O’Connor would end up needing crutches to walk when the disease began to attack her joints. She would eventually lose her life at only thirty-nine to the illness. Hulga is an expression of O’Connor’s own experiences with disability. In the aspect of spirituality, Hulga is labeled a freak for her atheism and strong critiques of those who follow religion. Her unmarried status at an older age and her high education makes her stand out even more against the backdrop of Southern culture and expectations. Hulga is actively rebelling against what is expected of her in every way she can, even as going as far as changing her name from Joy to Hulga. Grotesque in Southern literature can be interpreted differently by northern and southern readers. While a southern reader would find Hulga’s demeanor and attitude towards marriage and Christianity freak-like and grotesque, a Northern reader would find her physical deformity the grotesque. What makes a character a freak to one may not to another, as no single reader holds the same exact views or perceptions.

One of the most sacred things in the South is spirituality and Christianity. The corruption and defacing of it is often reacted to with disgust and anger by people who have been raised in that culture. Hulga’s desire to seduce and “corrupt” the salesman is inappropriate to Southern readers. But the reveal of the salesman’s nihilistic atheism and penchant for stealing prosthetics from the disabled is what is truly grotesque and disturbing. The salesman is the exact opposite of what is expected of him. He is a foil of the expectations he falls under and even a foil of himself at the beginning of the story when he is introduced. He is introduced as a clean-cut, suit-wearing man who is perceived to be down to earth and deeply religious, yet this whole persona is later shown to be a lie. O’Connor stated in an essay on grotesque, “I hate to think that in twenty years Southern writers too may be writing about men in gray-flannel suits and may have lost their ability to see that these gentlemen are even greater freaks than what we are writing about now.” (Jasmine 2019). The salesman is everything that Southern culture loathes. He is an atheist, a drinker, a liar, and promiscuous with young girls. The salesman is the ultimate freak and the prime grotesque of O’Connor’s story.

O’Connor takes a different approach than most southern authors on viewing the culture of the South. She takes its golden standards and unattainable expectations and creates characters that are the exact opposite of such expectations. Through the defacing of these standards, O’Connor creates disturbing stories that can stick with a reader for a long time after the first reading. She writes characters who have flaws that are deemed unacceptable and are freaks in their own ways, physical or internal. At times, these characters are extremely hard to feel sympathy for until someone with an even worse set of moral standards is introduced. However, these characters are not antagonists for being freaks, they are simply realistic. These characters are important in showing the true aspects of people’s nature and how unpredictable or vile people can be.

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