A comparison of the short stories "Good Country people" and "Where are you going, Where have you been?"

There are many similarities between the short stories "Good Country People" and "Where are you going, Where have you been?", 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. Their main characters, Hulga and Connie, are shockingly similar, and yet strangely different, one a 15 year old wishing to be older and beautiful, the other …

…y with what you have, because you might not belong anywhere else", and in the cases of Connie and Hulga, this moral fits perfectly. They are the same person with different circumstances, and they are so easily preyed on by the wiser smoother conman. As these stories blatantly state, be happy with what you have. You might not fit anywhere else, and one day, someone might just call you on your bluff, to disastrous consequences.