Oct 14, 2008

Good Country People | Themes

Innocence and Experience
Hulga does not understand herself as innocent; indeed, she considers herself to be quite experienced because her education has given her access to philosophers such as Nietzsche, whose words she underlines with a blue pencil: “science wishes to know nothing of nothing.” Significantly, Manley Pointer wears a blue suit and lines his suitcase of Bibles with blue, thus linking her nihilism to his evil masquerading as innocence. In denying God and asserting the primacy of Nothing, Hulga lacks the ability to recognize Manley for who he is because,...