Metamorphosis
Very few times in our lives do we encounter a situation that forces us to completely change our ways of thinking. In Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People”, the character Hulga is found in a situation that makes her do exactly that. Hulga’s attitude towards a specific character progressively changes through a series of strange and shocking events. We are able to view the morphing of her original opinions into the beliefs that she must accept at the conclusion of the story.
In the story, there is a drastic evolution of Hulga’s attitude towards Manley Pointer. In the beginning, we see her sarcastically referring to the God-fearing man as “the salt of the earth” and ordering her mother to get rid of him so she can eat. When her mother invites Pointer to eat with them, Hulga does her absolute best at completely ignoring the man despite his questions directly addressed towards her. However, when they finally do first speak, she behaves rather like a little girl. Like children, they first suffer through an immature bad joke. Hulga does not act like her usual pretentious self; she instead stands “blank and solid and silent” (1025). Hulga’s answers are short and shy and she comes off only as endearing when she looks up at Manley and suddenly says, “I may die too” (1025). When she is out of his company though, her attitude reverses back to normal. She dreams that she “very easily seduced him” (1025) and even “changed [his remorse] into a deeper understanding of life” (1025). She believes that Manley Pointer is quite simply merely a country boy, one without the intelligence she holds so responsibly. Her condescending attitude towards this common Bible salesman stays the same for quite a while. When he kisses her, “she [is] pleased to discover that it [is] an unexceptional experience and all a matter of mind control” (1026). She does not allow herself to be lured into a romantic experience with the man, further proving that she believes herself to be...