The Necessity of Disability in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Good Country People’ and ‘The Lame Shall Enter Firstu27

摘要

Yet there is incongruence in Ou27Connoru27s portrayals. As A. R. Coulthard suggests, u22Good Country Peopleu22 and u22The Lame Shall Enter Firstu22 both u22leave the question of salvation unansweredu22 (55), and the disabled who embody the imperfect human form are rarely saved. I would like to redeem Hulga Hopewell and Rufus Johnson, however, and to use their disability to do so. Specifically, I suggest that the non-disabled humanity in these texts is, in fact, corrupt, selfish, and unforgiving, and that this view arises because of characters such as Hulga and Rufus. The disabled are, in fact, necessary in order to expose imperfection and inhumanity.