Manly Pointer is not actually the man’s name. According to Elizabeth Hubbard: Similarly, the fake Bible salesman has only assumed the name Manley Pointer; we never know his real name, and his chosen name itself is ambiguous. On the one hand, his attempt to seduce Hulga may be guided by his lascivious manly pointer . . . On the other hand, however, his name might also suggest that he is a man who enters Hulga’s life to point her away from the path she has chosen for herself, marking him as a prophet of sorts” (Hubbard 64).
As the statement by Elizabeth Hubbard states who Manly Pointer is, one could see that he is very deceiving. By his deceiving ways he seduces Joy-Hulga and runs off with her artificial leg. But as stated earlier, Joy-Hulga thought she was going to seduce him but she was wrong. O’Connor is using Joy-Hulga to symbolize her religion of nihilism as Joy-Hulga thought that she was going to seduce a good Christian man to prove her point that there is no higher power and that morals are meaningless and that Manly Pointer should believe in nothing much like she