The Character of Hulga in Good Country People by Mary Flannery OConnor

The Character of Hulga in well-behaved Country People by Mary Flannery OConnor By definition joy means a bang-up feeling of pleasure and happiness. In Mary Flannery OConnors short degree Good Country People, gladden Freeman was non at all joyful. Actually, she was the tiny opposite. Joys leg was shot off in a hunting separatrix when she was ten. Because of that incident, Joy was a stout girl in her thirties who had neer danced a step or had any normal good times. (OConnor 249). She had a wooden leg that only brought her teasing from others and problems in doing daily activities. Joy was very rude as well. In the story it speaks of her comments being so rude and ugly and her face so glum that her mothers boss, Mrs. Hopewell, would tell her if she could not come pleasantly than for her to not come at all. (OConnor 249). In the story she is very rude to her mother. She would yell at her mother and tell her to forecast inside herself and see exactly what she was, whic h she believed was nothing. The story speaks of her entering rooms with her wooden leg making a hulking sound. In all she was measly to be around and when she made an entrance it was one of the most disturb ones of all. Joy also hated any living thing, which included animals, flowers, and specially young men. The only thing that ever made Joy euphoric in her life was when she went to school and acquired her Ph.D. in philosophy. Because she was older, she had no real causal agency to go back to school, so she was stuck with nothing to bring her pleasure or personal enrichment. When Joy was twenty-one and away from home she had her name legitimately changed. She tried to find the most horrible sounding syllables to put unneurotic and she thought of the name Hulga.... ...ated and had a Ph.D. in Philosophy. She could not call her little girl a schoolteacher, a nurse, or a chemical engineer and that daunted her. These muckle and episodes in Joys life made her a ver y slimy person. They made her hate all that surrounded her, which included flowers, animals, and young men. This is why Joy changes her name to Hulga when she was twenty-one years old. She believed the name represented her as an individual. The name was fierce, strong, and determined just like her. The name reminded her of the broad, blank take away of a battleship. Joy felt the name reflected her inside and out. It separated her from the people who surrounded her that she hated the most. Works Cited OConnor, Flannery. Good Country People. Literature an foundation garment to Fiction, Poetry, And Drama. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Longman. 2002. (247-261)