After having read Good Country People three times, the first time to take note of
my personal reaction, the second and third times to glean information, I found from my
personal perspective this is the typical O’Conner story--everything is hum-drum dry and
then along comes the antagonist to turn it upside down and to teach someone (even the
reader) a lesson. Initially it appears that Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman will be the
ones who will be learning something in this story. They are both set in their ways and
look like they need to see another point of view in life. Their personalities are sharply
defined and brought to the reader’s attention to where if we were to meet these people on
the street, we would say to ourselves, “There goes Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman.”
Whereas, Joy Hopewell is a sullen two-dimensional figure in the beginning and initially
we see little hope for her development because she keeps herself aloof and emotionally
isolated from her mother and Mrs. Freeman, and from us as the omniscient audience.
The more Joy’s personality comes out, the more we realize that Mrs. Hopewell
still lives in the past at the time when Joy’s leg was blow off in a hunting accident. She is
a buffer for Joy’s life. She still sees Joy as her child even though Joy is “thirty two years
old and is highly educated” (1). She excuses Joy’s ugly remarks and glum face as a result
of the hunting accident. Mrs. Freeman is totally fascinated with anything morbid; Joy’s
hunting accident being within that frame of morbidity. Joy’s days are a continuous repetition of the past and what will be in the future. All three women are caught in a
repetitive loop of existence. It plays over each day with little or no variance, until the
Bible salesman comes along. He is the catalytic machination that will change something
and/or someone in this story.
Manley Pointer (love the play on words!) looks like a cheesy carnival worker with
his bright blue suit and yellow socks, sticky-looking brown hair (6). And the valise
which can hold a number of possible things, but for now we assume it holds Bibles. He
tweaks the emotional heart strings of Mrs. Hopewell by telling her what she wants to
hear--her friends say she is a good woman of Christian values (6), he is a simple country
boy, to which she immediately responds with hospitality to invite him for dinner. My
response to Pointer would be to immediately show this bum the door and ask myself--
how stupid can Mrs. Hopewell be? Joy hears all this schmarmy stuff from her vantage
point in the kitchen and tells her mother to get him out so they can eat dinner.
The relationship between Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman is unclear until it is
revealed that Mrs. Hopewell hired the Freemans (ah, there is a Mr. Freeman!) four years
ago to work her farm (2). Ahhh! That is the basis for the familiarity between the two
women and why Mrs. Freeman thinks she needs to know all that goes on in the Hopewell
house and Mrs. Hopewell lets her in on everything.
Mrs. Hopewell is easily swayed if certain trigger words are said--such as “salt of
the earth,” “good country people,” “nothing is perfect,” “that is life,” “it takes all kinds to
make the world” (3).
Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman fade into the background and Joy/Hulga
emerges as a three dimensional character when Manley Pointer gets into her thoughts. She thinks she is immune to such emotions as she sees through them into a nothingness
and she can enlighten him, or so says her PhD in Philosophy education. (My thought and
opinion here are Philosophy is a totally useless major unless you earn a PhD and teach
educated idiot, speaking and arguing in circles with no real problem-solving skills. Like I
said, just my opinion.) Manley Pointer’s true colors emerge in the barn and it is Joy who
becomes the “student” in his little game. Joy may have a PhD but she is no smarter than
her mother and Mrs. Freeman.
The part of the text that caused me to do the most serious thinking is when Joy
screams at her mother during dinner to “Look inside yourself!” Mrs. Hopewell may be a
very shallow character, but it is Joy who is the most hollow character because of her
esoteric attitude toward her mother and Mrs. Freeman. She may be educated but she is
what I call an “educated idiot.” Very book smart, but very little, if any, practicum. In the
barn with Pointer, she is left nearly blind when he takes her glasses, she is left immobile
when he takes her artificial leg, and she is forced to “see” the world differently because
she has been had by someone she thought was “good country people.”
