good country people
...denies the “Joy” that existed previously. Flannery O’Conner cites that “religious premises is set in opposition to the philosophical stand of nihilism assumed by the character”(48). In the case of Joy-Hulga, the place O’Conner would attribute to religion has been replaced by an exaltation of reason. For O’Conner, this results in a deformity spirit. In her acceptance of the name Hulga, she also accepts the tenets of her nihilism and foregoes the “Joy” of a complete life, “such as dogs, cats, birds, flowers, nature or nice young men”(109). Nihilism is not a belief but rather a viewpoint that looks on traditional values and beliefs as being unfounded and even detrimental to society. Many nihilist also think that life itself is senseless and useless, that has no particular purpose. A nihilist is atheist and often has a distinct negative attitude. Some think that conditions are so terrible that destruction and reconstruction are the only means available. Joy-Hulge’s nihilism is encompassed in her retreat behind her own intellectual accomplishments: Feeley adds that “Joy-Hulga feels that she has earned the right to look smugly down her nose at anyone or any conversation in which she is involved because of her educational background”(35). With this background of wisdom to cloak around her body, she feels impervious to others. The manner in which Joy-Hulga loses her false leg is indicative of O’Conner’s duality of innocence and worldliness. The intellectualism Joy-Hulga assumes is a form of worldliness that is balanced by an unseemly or false innocence. The “seduction” by the Bible quoting, leg-stealing young man is a loss of true innocence that brings the falseness of the intellectualizing into perspective. The irony embedded within the story includes the thought that in order to attain a “true” intellectual state, she must lose her innocence or reliance on her intellectual mask. The loss of her emotional “crutch” allows her to forgo the intellectualization and to come to terms with the physical and emotional realities surrounding her deformity, or lake of belief. The reader has a chance to glimpse the importance of the wooden leg when she explains, “No one ever touched it but her. She took care of it as someone else would his soul”(117). “In fact,” Magee assorts, “the character’s actual deformity, her “false” God as represented by the Holy Bible and the wooden leg is her intellectual nihilism”(86). When Manley...