Good Country People

The names in “Good Country People” all have some symbolic resonance, particularly those chosen by the characters. Hulga changing her name from Joy is the clearest example: by abandoning a name that had happy connotations for one that sounds ugly and reminds her of a Vulcan fire god, she is asserting a new identity for herself that feels explicitly designed to be in opposition to her mother’s hopes for her. That their surname is Hopewell is another allusion to the disconnect between Mrs. Hopewell’s ideas about the family and their reality as two people who live in discontent and make false assumptions about each other and the people around them. Hulga chose her name to be a kind of cudgel against the world, but she finds that Mrs. Freeman’s use of it feels like it’s being turned against her, suggesting that her attempt to redefine herself is worthy of mockery (much like she mocks Mrs. Freeman’s daughters by referring to them as Glycerine and Caramel, indicating her belief that they are sickly-sweet).

Manley Pointer has also taken on an assumed name that gives away who he really is: a puerile young man who has named himself after a phallus. This is an early hint to the reader that he is not what he seems, but he presents himself as a simple man who may have this name through another bit of ridiculous misfortune in his outsized narrative of poverty and illness. In every instance, the story’s treatment of names demonstrates the struggle between how a person sees themselves and how the world sees them, which helps draw attention to the false assumptions and judgments that drive the tension in the story.