Introducción a Los Estudios Literarios

Mirleth Argáiz Cabrera
Essay #1
Introducción a los Estudios Literarios
Miescha Bycura
14 September 2010Location Influence on Joy

The location in this story is not only the place, it involves the ideas and prejudices about the space Flannery is talking about and also the people that lives there. In the“Good Country People” we are transported to a place in the countryside in which Flannery makes us think that Joy feels she does not belong to. So why is it? How does the place makes Joy to be Hulga?At some situations the author changes the focusing in order to makes us experience the way things are seen by Mrs. Hopewell, Mrs. Freeman and Joy. In the end we discover this is all about Joy, whenshe is alone in the barn after the swindler leaves her there without her wooden leg and realizing that she is not as she thought she was. Instead of seduce the young man Joy received a “humblenesslesson” (Wyatt, 3) given by someone that is the kind of person Joy wanted everybody to think she was.
Flannery employs the names of the characters to tell us more about them in addition to their actionsin the story. First, we have Mrs. Hopewell, who thinks that country people is not evil because they are simple. However, Mrs. Hopewell is the simple one and naïve, she just looks at people’s cover andher daughter knows it “Woman! do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not?” (184).
There is also Mrs. Freeman who, according to Mrs. Hopewell, is one of those goodcountry people but actually she is not that good and she knows, she say it at the end of the story “Some can’t be that simple” and after that she adds “I know I never could.” (194) here she is referringto the young swindler, so she actually is like him. To Mrs. Hopewell good country people are simple and this woman is admitting she could never be simple so she is not good.
So this is the...