Good and Evil Among the Good Country Folks In her short story, The Good Country Folks, Flannery O'Connor uses all the elements of humor, irony and paradox mixed with the Christian system. belief in evil and redemption. This is no more evident than in the character of Joy, the girl, who lost a leg in a hunting accident at the age of 12 and now has a wooden leg in its place. Throughout the story, it becomes increasingly clear that Joy's physical affliction is also closely linked to a spiritual affliction. As the story unfolds, Joy's great efforts to recreate her inner self, her soul, are revealed in minute detail. It seems she has successfully molded her own soul into a spirit as hard and unyielding as the prosthetic that now replaces her naturally soft and flexible appendix. In Christian society and belief, as well as many other religions, the one true possession over which a person has complete control is their eternal soul. It is this spirit that makes each one truly unique from the others. The inner struggle between good and evil and the daily struggle to ensure that good prevails is the focal point of a true believer's life. Only through this triumph of good can he achieve salvation in the eyes of God. Joy, on the other hand, seems determined to erect barriers around her soul that would make her as rigid and unfeeling as her wooden leg. Just like the surgeon who had to perform a prosthetic operation years ago to replace a natural part of her physical body, she is apparently trying to fulfill that same function with her spiritual side as well. She took great care to recreate her "self" in a...... middle of paper ......the ears were now completely useless. Being an atheist and realizing not that there is a God, but discovering that there is a devil, must be a very frightening and disheartening experience. Because if there is definitely one, there must be the other. Works Cited Asals, Frederick. Flannery O'Connor: The Imagination of Extremities. The University of Georgia Press: Athens, Georgia, 1982. Brinkmeyer, Robert H. The Art and Vision of Flannery O'Connor. Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1989.DiYanni, Robert. Reading literature, fiction, poetry, theater and essays. McGraw Hill: Boston, Massachusette, 1998. Eggenschwiler, David. The Christian Humanism of Flannery O'Connor. Wayne State University Press: Detroit, Michigan, 1972.Feeley, Kathleen. Flannery O'Connor: The Voice of the Peacock. Rugers University Press: New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1972.