Hulga Misjudging Manley Pointer's Good Country People

Sometimes people see exactly what they expect to see. When the family meets the traveling Bible salesman named Manley Pointer in “Good Country People”, they see him as an honest young man trying to make a living. However, when he seduces the learned daughter, Hulga, she finds out his true nature. Instead of a religious man who wants to spread the Will of God, he is a cynical atheist who uses his salesman disguise to get what he wants. As literary critic Kathleen Feeley says, “That the salesman is peddling Bibles is the central perversion of the story” (Feeley, 212). When the truth comes out, Hulga is horrified, as her outlook of life was being made a bit better, but it was a lie. Even the Bible itself was just a cover, as it held liquor, a
Hopewell misjudging her own daughter. Hulga, who has never been loved for who she is and does not trust people as a result, ends up getting hurt by the deceptiveness of Manley Pointer. Her artificial leg is stolen, and she finds out that even his name is a lie. The worst thing part of this scene is that, as said by literary critic Carol M. Andrews, “A woman who has never been appreciated for herself is suddenly confronted with the possibility of a life… But when he opens his valise… her rosy romantic picture is shattered.” Hulga was dreaming and considering a life away from her mother, only to have that dream turn into a nightmare she could not have considered. Mrs. Hopewell, while meaning well, does not provide the love that Hulga needed. In fact, her name, “Hopewell”, shows a lot of her character. She hopes things will turn out well, for Hulga, for her hired help, for Manley Pointer, for herself. But because all she does is hope, and places her attention on what Hulga does not have, things do not turn out well. If she had given Hulga the attention she needed, it is possible that the entire scene would not have happened at all. By contrast, Mrs. Freeman, the hired help, knows that the world cannot be “simple”. Despite the irony of not being free because she is the hired help, Mrs. Freeman is free to see that the world is not as perfect as Mrs. Hopewell pretends it is. In fact, she is one of the only
As a result, they are surprised what people can be capable of. The town saw Miss Emily constantly and deemed her mildly eccentric, only to discover she was capable of murder. The narrator was judging Robert before he even met the man, and found out that just because stereotypes are based on truth does not mean they are the truth. The Hopewells judge the Bible salesman as simple, only for Hulga to find it is a cover to get what he wants. However, all three stories have characters who learn that seeing what one expects to see can limit true judgment. If these characters had looked at the object of their judgment with clear eyes, all of them would have been less surprised. All in all, using facts and not opinions can help everyone judge more