Response 2:

After reading Good Country People, both aphorisms, “A man’s character is his fate”, and “All is flux nothing stays still” can be applied to a few characters in this story. To me, “a man’s character is his fate” means that what one decides to do, will have an impact on his future, and that one can choose the type of character he decides to portray to influence the life he lives. A good example of this is Manley Pointer. He goes from house to house pretending to sell bibles, but in the end lures some unsuspecting  female off and takes “interesting” things from them by making them feel like he cares about them. He says that “I been believing in nothing every since I was born”. This is his established character that he stick with his whole life, so in turn, his fate is to always be on the run stealing form people. He knows he is wrong, which is why he changes his name, and doesn’t stay anywhere long. One could even say that since he will not live long, his bad character will equal his death, unless that was a lie also. This aphorism could also mean that if you have bad character, the resulting effect is bad Karma or bad “fate”. If you were to look at it this way, then one could assume since he has bad moral character, he will one day get caught and spend time in jail, or even death. You can also apply this aphorism to Joy. From the start, she is rude, does not have any faith and does not believe in anything. For people who believe in karma, her bad character influences her bad fait of getting her leg taken from her and left alone in the barn. 

As we talk about old world order and new world order, I think Joy had a more new world order perspective because she had no faith or belief in God. She has more belief in science which is apparent in the book Mrs Hopewell found in her room. But ironically, Mrs Hopewell says that Joy’s occupation as a philosopher dies years ago with the Greeks and Romans which could refer to a more old world order point of view. Joy’s view of good country people is also of a more old world order point of view because she thinks that they are just stupid and that her, being a college graduate would be able to outsmart any country person. She later finds out that her opinions about country people were wrong, when he tricks her and steals her leg. After this, I am sure she had a different perspective of country people…a new world order perspective in fact. This leads me to The Cold War and the aphorism “all is flux, nothing is still”. The Cold War talks about the end of WWII and the events leading up to the cold war, and the events that occur during. This was a time of extreme change, not only for society but also for the economy. Even today society is continuously changing. Change in opinions that people have of other people are always changing. People use to hate African Americans, and other minorities. while some people are still in the old world order of thinking, many people have changed their opinions. Joy, will surely have a completely different view of country people form now on. After reading the first few chapters of the cold war, I can more understand why Stalin did the things he did, while before, I just assumed America was the force of good, while Russia and communism were evil, even though the idea of communism isn’t really bad, My point is both The Cold War and Good Country People both portray example of flux throughout time and that people and society will continue to change as time goes on.