In Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People," the protagonist Hulga, spends her entire

adult life doing her best to deny and rebel against her mother's optimistic attitude. Hulga is a

highly educated southern woman who lost her leg in an accident at the age of ten and suffers

from a heart ailment. Due to these hardships, at thirty-two she still lives with her mother, and

is very negative about life. The highly educated Hulga feels superior to those around her due to

their lack of education and complexity. Hulga has no control over the negative emotions she

feels, and allows these incidents to shape the remainder of her life. O'Connor uses Hulga to

demonstrate how an intense feeling of hostility and intellectual superiority can damage

relationships, inhibit intellectual and emotional growth, and blind one to reality.

Hulga despises her situation and believes that she is mentally above those around her,

therefore, she feels no need to develop her relations with them. There seems to be a symbolic

connection between her "weak heart" (O'Connor 108) and her lack of emotional attachments.

She resents the heart condition that forces her

into removing her artificial leg. After putting her in a helpless position, he reveals that he too is

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1029
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)