Trinity

Belief and Reason in the New World Order February 6, 2009

Flannery O’Connor’s short story Good Country People is fairly typical of her work, and is indicative of the changing values of the time in which she wrote.  The story was published in 1955, a time of great change in terms of the geopolitical and socioeconomic characteristics of the world, the nation, and specifically the South, the subject of most of O’Connor’s work.  The two World Wars over the four prior decades had effectively ended the European domination of the globe and the colonial imperialism that had long been at the center of international affairs.  The destruction of the old world order was accompanied by the rise of a new system, rooted in the rational ideals of the Enlightenment and embodied in the United States, the emerging superpower that took up the banner of freedom and liberty against the oppressive war machine of the Soviet Union.  Driven in part by the Cold War and in part by the social changes occurring in American culture, the people of the new order had to examine the tensions resulting from the intersection of belief and reason within their modes of thinking.

In the South, O’Connor’s particular focus, the traditional point of view was ostensibly grounded in Christianity, but was in fact founded on the secular old-world sensibilities regarding propriety and class distinctions.  This perspective is made clear in the character of Mrs. Hopewell, who forces everything and everyone around her into the worldview that her traditional upbringing has instilled in her.  She is deeply disappointed in what she sees as her daughter’s willful refusal to grow out of her intellectual phase and settle down to the life of a proper Southern matron; she also clings to her preconceived notions of class when relating to her tenants, seeing the transients as trash but insisting that the Freemans are good country people (and as such, clearly and comfortably beneath her in the established social hierarchy).  Her need to conform the world around her to the static ideal of her traditional views is shown to be incompatible with the inexorable changes taking place in that world, as it was put so well by Heraclitus.  In fact, she trusts her traditional worldview to protect her from any change that might threaten to upset her carefully ordered ideals, a fallacy which is exposed and exploited by Manley Pointer.

Pointer also serves as the catalyst for exposing the flaws of another perspective, that of Joy Hopewell.  She believes that she has escaped the trap of her mother’s irrational worldview, which she sees as representative of religion, by pursuing an education and learning to discard everything but reason alone.  Her mother’s discovery of the Nietzsche text, which horrifies her although she does not recognize the source, clearly outlines Joy’s own worldview.  It is in this light that she changes her name to Hulga, attempting to break free of the system in which her mother had attempted to place her.  Her entire perspective is centered on an extremely nihilistic view of life, and she is devoted in her belief that Nothing is central to life and that reason has nothing to say about Nothing.  To Hulga, the meaning of life is irrelevant and nonexistent.  Ironically, it was precisely this idea that was the genesis of the socialist beliefs that drove the entire Second World to pursue the utter destruction of the freedom and liberty so cherished by those of the new world order.  The inherent flaw in this reasoning is again exposed by Manley Pointer, who turns Hulga’s attempts to corrupt his pious alter ego back on themselves, showing her the emptiness and despair of her own beliefs.

By illustrating the fundamental flaws of both Mrs. Hopewell’s denial of change in favor of tradition and her daughter’s denial of belief in favor reason, O’Connor shows that neither blindly trusting in pseudo-religious values to ward off change nor forgoing religious belief altogether is a viable option.  Instead, O’Connor shows that faith is a necessary concept, one that enables us to adapt to the dynamic world around us without compromising our understanding of the fundamental principles that govern existence.