Comparing and Contrasting Connie and Hulga

There are many similarities between the short stories "Good Country People", by Flannery O'Connor, and "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?", by Joyce Carol Oates, most notably their characters. Both stories contain a female protagonist and a male antagonist whose confrontations start out relatively normal and progress to more and more surreal and twisted endings. The main characters, Hulga and Connie, are shockingly similar, and yet strangely different. Connie is a 15-year-old wishing …

…the suitcase...and the girl was left, sitting on the straw in the dusty sunlight" (146). Work Cited O'Connor, Flannery. "Good Country People." Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2002. 134-147 Oates, Joyce Carol. "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" Literature and the Writing Process. Ed. Elizabeth McMahan, Susan X Day, and Robert Funk. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice, 2002. 152-164