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God Is Dead

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God Is Dead
In "Good Country People" O’Connor explained the inner world of selfish, ugly and humble heart by the two protagonists Joy and Pointer’s descriptions, the task of character disgusting twisted side vividly demonstrated to the readers, merciless in exposing pure real life all the evils of human nature and its destruction.
Joy is a negative with the nihilist, she doubts everything, hate everything, negating all the traditional values that everywhere is full of evil, all is vanity, she is also a twist on the character, she strongly highlight and strengthen their own to emphasize its ugly appearance "inner beauty" to abnormal behavior against everything around to vent discontent of reality. She pretentious, despised everything, she was advertised herself “I’m one 0f those people who see through to nothing” revealing the arrogance of her heart. She attempts to change Pointer's beliefs, her own blind arrogance ultimately embarrassing, pitiful situation; in fact, he is a hidden under the ugly appearance of the inner ugly people.
O’Connor described both her ugly surface and inner world, “she had thought and thought until she had hit upon the ugliest name in any language. Then she had gone and had the beautiful name, Joy, changed without telling her mother” (page. 145). The reason that Joy find a most deliberately nasty name, is not because of low self-esteem, on the contrary, she put the most terrible name as the highest symbol of the creative act, which shows her superior attitude. In addition, its appearance would have been affected by the wooden leg, but it became her superior of capital, her blind self-confidence and arrogance is also reflected in their self-learned and superior on that. To compensate for physical defects, she strenuously study, 30 years old to obtain a doctorate, after that she despises everything around, but also looks down on the mother's short-sighted, has become a handsome, pretentious old maid. And she suffered to her knowledge of education is the largest plausible understanding of "nothing" theory, she tags her as “I’m one 0f those people who see through to nothing” This was the character that caught her into a deadly, miserable embarrassment when she was facing Pointer.
She spends all the things she can use to arm herself. She is holding defensive and hostile attitude to the world, to her mother, to the neighbors and also to love. Only very weak people would be so tight to protect themselves, what she wants to protect? Her legs. This point has been given away by Pointer: "it’s what makes you different. You ain’t like anybody else"(page. 157) This sentence is enough to make her Ph.D. degree to become ridiculous and pathetic.
“Joy had walked all the way to the gate with him and Mrs. Hopewell could not imagine what they had said to each other.”(page. 151) This is the last time we see the name “Joy” appear in this novel and this is the moment Joy starts to release her defensive attitude to Pointer by turning into Hulga, the pretentious woman.
For many years, she has protected herself very well, and then what is that to break in her defense? Love. It’s very touched by reading the process of the girl opening herself. Her wooden leg is her disease her dead point, her vulnerability and pride. “No one ever touched it but her. She took care of it as someone else would his soul, in private and almost with her own eyes turned away” (page. 157) but she puts it off, pay at the hands of a stranger. This is love. Love is completely open to a person could be a stranger, and unreserved delivery. It’s wonderful, this is how the most hard things collapsed by the softest.
“It was like surrendering to him completely. It was like losing her own life and finding it again, miraculously, in his.” (page. 157) This one is written by faith. It’s not only about the girl yield to love, but rather that it was her first taste of the "believe". She was being overwhelmed by fear because she lost her leg in the past, and therefore refuse to believe that all options to protect themselves, so now she can go again tasted the sweetness and wonder of "believe". This is the glorious radiance moment. People need to believe, and need to be completely loved and accepted, the beauty of this moment contrasting the absurdity and pain moment when people can not believe and can not be accepted.
However, the cruel is she believes in wrong thing again. Pointer lied to her; he is a real nihilist. “I have gotten a lot of interesting things” (page. 158) the things he has collected “a woman’s glass eye”, her glasses and “a wooden leg” are actually the collections of people’s injured souls. How terrible the man is! He is a presenter of a group of people who believe in “god is dead” (by Nietzsche). “I been believing in nothing every since I was born!” (page. 159) how hopeless and pathetic the world will be if people lose all their respect and faith.
People like Pointer have dead souls, since they have no longer have compassions and love. Like the quote in Bible “The spirit of the man dead as lights go out, has absolutely no light in the darkness”

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