ENGL 4310

I just have to say that the idea of this story is so freaking cool, the traveling Bible salesman, who collects prosthetic parts from unsuspecting women, by seducing them. Awesome.

The night before the incident, Hulga/ Joy dreams about seducing the man and then having to “reckon with his remorse” (276). After she has seduced him in her dream, she has to console him; she has to take his shame away. In her dream, it is Hulga that is saving the Bible sales man, not the other way around.

In actuality, the two meet and head out for the picnic, without a basket in tow. They head into the forest, find a barn that happens to be similar to the one in Hulga’s dream. Somehow, the Bible salesman gets her up the ladder and into the loft. He seduces her, and she is the one who has to reckon with remorse. She assumed that he was a simple Bible salesman from the country; she didn’t expect to get swindled out of her leg. (Which, by the way, they made out once and she has to prove to him that she loves him? What exactly does he have to do to show her? I mean other than kissing her like a fish. Silly silly girl…) Hulga thinks that she has found someone with true innocence, and that she had taken off her blind fold. Guess not. Maybe under the blind fold there lies another. It makes me wonder when something can really be true, when have you reached the bottom? I don’t know, and Hulga certainly doesn’t either.