Naïveté in Flannery OConnor’s Good Country People Essay -- OConnor G

Navet in Flannery OConnors Good estate People In Good Country People, Flannery OConnor skillfully presents a story from a third-person point of view, in which the protagonist, exult-Hulga, believes that she is not one of those good country people. Joy is an intelligent and educated but emotionally troubled young woman, struggling to snuff it in a farm environment deep in the countryside of the southeast United States, where she feels that she does not belong. Considering herself intellectually superior to the storys other characters, she experiences an epiphany that may lead her to see her assumptions. Her experience marks a personal transition for her and constitutes the storys theme--the passage from navet to knowledge.OConnor crafts the story so that the plot does not actually begin until cortical potential into the characters has been provided. The limited omniscience persona of the narrative voice alternates between Joy and her mother, Mrs. Hopewell. The exposition provides an understanding of how the characters have developed the personality traits they possess when the drama begins to take place, which is on a Friday evening during the Spring sometime during the mid-1950s. The exposition demonstrates how Joy develops the social and philosophical assumptions that deeply affect the way she sees herself and relates to others.A view into Joy-Hulgas past reveals why she has so much internal conflict and needs to empower herself through the constant judgment of others. What most strongly sets her apart from others is her prosthetic leg, which she has been wearing since her certain leg was shot off at ten years of age in a hunting accident. Enduring teasing and other social hardships caused by her disability has led... ...she has also lost the foundation of her identity, her leg. She is faced with the realization that she has been nave all along. In her pattern of being quick to make assumptions to build her give birth self esteem, Joy-Hulga has not use d her intelligence in a socially beneficial way.The results of her shocking experience could be one of many, but considering Joy-Hulgas personality, she is likely to arrest even more defensive, hostile, and antisocial. She might become less willing to trust others, especially those who come across as good country people. One would hope, however, that Joy will continue to recognize and admit her own navet and to make fewer assumptions about the navet of others. Work CitedOConnor, Flannery. Good Country People. Literature Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. Robert DiYanni. 5th ed. New York, NY McGraw, 2002. 181-194.