Analyze a short story - Putri Awis Nur Fadilah

 

Name    : Putri Awis Nur Fadilah
NIM       : 2130911023

 

Analyze a short story Good Country People by Flannery O'Connor

Mrs. Hopewell owns a farm in rural Georgia which she runs with the assistance of her tenants, Mr. and Mrs. Freeman. Mrs. Hopewell's daughter, Joy, is thirty-two years old and lost her leg in a childhood shooting accident. Joy is an atheist and has a Ph.D. in philosophy but seems non-sensible to her mother, and in an act of rebellion against her mother, Joy changed her name to "Hulga," the ugliest name Mrs. Hopewell can imagine. A Bible salesman, who introduces himself as Manley Pointer, visits the family and is invited for dinner. Mrs. Hopewell believes Manley is "good country people." While leaving the home, Pointer invites Joy for a picnic date the next evening, and she imagines seducing the innocent Bible salesman. During the date, he persuades her to go up into the barn loft where he persuades her to remove her prosthetic leg and takes her glasses. He then produces a hollowed-out Bible containing a bottle of whiskey, sex cards, and some condoms. He tries to get her to drink some liquor, but she rebuffs his advances. At that point he disappears with her leg after telling her that he collects prostheses from disabled people and is a nihilistic atheist.

 

PLOT 

1. Exposition

At the beginning of the story, we will be introduced to the characters in this story, such as the main characters themselves, namely Hulga  and her mother mrs. Hopewell. Besides that, it also tells the background and characteristics of the characters. 

2. Inciting Moment

In this part, signs of a problem have started to appear. where in this story occurs when Manley Pointer which is a traveling bible salesman comes to mrs. Hopewell house then the man starts talking with Hulga, and this is where the conflict will start.

3. Rising Action

Several things started to happen, starting when Hulga and Manley Pointer went to a place just the two of them, at first they were just chatting casually and go for a walk. He had on the same suit and the same yellow socks sucked down in his shoes from walking. He crossed the highway and said, “I knew you'd come!” The girl wondered acidly how he had known this. She pointed to the valise and asked, “Why did you bring your Bibles?” He took her elbow, smiling down on her as if he could not stop. “You can never tell when you‖ll need the word of God, Hulga,” he said. They feel attracted to each other because of their shortcomings, Hulga with her wooden leg and the pointer with his heart condition that make him not live long.  

4. Climax

The Manley pointer can change Hulga's trust in him. Hulga believes that he is a good person. The manley pointer forcing Hulga to tell him that she loves him “You got to say it,” he repeated. “You got to say you love me.” and Hulga said “yes, yes”. After that, he ask her to take off her wooden leg to prove that she loves him, but she said “no” and the bible salesman seems upset because of her, because Hulga didn't want to disappoint him, he finally take off of her wooden leg and put it back on again and then he took it off himself. When the Manley pointer kiss her with her wooden leg off, she pushed him off and said, “Put it back on me now.” “Wait,” he said. He leaned the other way and pulled the valise toward him and opened it. It had a pale blue spotted lining and there were only two Bibles in it. He took one of these out and opened the cover of it. It was hollow and contained a pocket flask of whiskey, a pack of cards, and a small blue box with printing on it. He put the blue box in her hand. THIS PRODUCT TO BE USED ONLY FOR THE PREVENTION OF DISEASE, she read, and dropped it. The boy was unscrewing the top of the flask. He stopped and pointed, with a smile, to the deck of cards. It was not an ordinary deck but one with an obscene picture on the back of each card.

5. Falling Action

Hulga ask him “Aren;t you,” she murmured, “aren't you just good country people?”
“Yeah,” he said, curling his lip slightly, “but it ain't held me back none. I'm as good as you any day in the week.” Hulga screaming to him that she wants her wooden leg back, but the manley pointer pushed it farther away with his foot. Hulga has always thought that he is a good person.
“I’ve gotten a lot of interesting things,” he said. “One time I got a woman’s glass eye this way. And you needn’t to think you’ll catch me because Pointer ain’t really my name. I use a different name at every house I call at and don’t stay nowhere long. And I’ll tell you another thing, Hulga,” he said, using the name as if he didn’t think much of it, “you ain’t so smart. I been believing in nothing ever since I was born!” and then the toast-colored hat disappeared down the hole and the girl was left, sitting on the straw in the dusty sunlight. When she turned her churning face toward the opening, she saw his blue figure struggling successfully over the green speckled lake. 

6. Denouement

Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman, who were in the back pasture, digging up onions, saw him emerge a little later from the woods and head across the meadow toward the highway. “Why, that looks like that nice dull young man that tried to sell me a Bible yesterday,” Mrs. Hopewell said, squinting. “He must have been selling them to the Negroes back in there. He was so simple,” she said, “but I guess the world would be better off if we were all that simple.”
Mrs. Freeman's gaze drove forward and just touched him before he disappeared under the hill. Then she returned her attention to the evilsmelling onion shoot she was lifting from the ground. “Some can‖t be that simple,” she said. “I know I never could.”

 

CONFLICT

Social Conflict
Hulga and Mrs. Hopewall are blind to the world as it really exists. Both of them fail to see that the world is a mixture of good and evil. They’re assume that the world is much simpler than it actually is.  

CHARACTER

•Mrs. Freeman – Woman who lives next door to Mrs. Hopewell and works for Mrs. Hopewell as a tenant farmer, she clearer of the view of the realities of the world

•Glynese Freeman – Mrs. Freeman’s daughter, a redhead, eighteen “with many admirers”

•Carramae Freeman – Mrs. Freeman’s daughter,a blonde, fifteen but married and pregnant

•Mrs. Hopewell – A divorcee, owner of a farm, and the mother of Joy/Hulga don’t know anything about world, living in a world where clichés operate as truth.

•Joy/Hulga Hopewell – Mrs. Hopewell’s thirty-two-year-old daughter with a Ph.D. degree in philosophy and a wooden leg. She has a simple-minded about the world and she doesn't believe in god. Her legal name was Hulga but her mother call her Joy.

•Manley Pointer – A traveling Bible salesman from out in the country around Willohobie. he looks good at first with a bright blue suit and yellow socks that were not pulled up far enough. He had prominent face bones and a streak of sticky-looking brown hair falling across his forehead. He convince people with his words.

 

SETTING

 

1. Setting of place  

• Farm: The place where mrs. hopewell and mrs. freeman is farming, and also where mrs. freeman works for mrs. Hopewell

• Mrs. Hopewell’s House: The house of mrs. Hopewell and Hulga life in it, and also mrs. freeman who work for mrs. Hopewell. The place where the story begins

2. Style of setting

• Kitchen: In this story, the setting place of kitchen is use to cooking, having a breakfast, dinner, and when they had no guest they ate in the kitchen because that was easier. Also it’s a place when Hulga stumped into the kitchen.

• Hulga’s Room: When her mother come to her room to pick up one of the books and opening it randomly

• Parlor: manley pointer came into the parlor and sat down on the edge of a straight chair and put the suitcase between his feet and glanced around the room as if he were sizing her up by it. Her silver gleamed on the two sideboards; she decided he had never been in a room as elegant as this.

• Road: when Hulga and manley pointer chatting

• Gate: Hulga and manley pointer walk off together toward the gate of her house

• Highway: An Appointment place for Hulga and manley pointer meet

• Barn: The place where they talk and sit, and also when the climax happened