I found O’Connor’s depiction of nature in the South to particularly compelling in her short story\u00a0“A View of the Woods.” \u00a0In her first paragraph she sets the scene for the story set between “the red corrugated lake” and the “black line of woods” (54). Her focus on dirt and clay is apparent throughout the story and I found O’Connor’s description of Mary Fortune on pages 58 and 59 as “being thoroughly of his clay” and with “very fine, sand-colored hair” to be especially interesting. \u00a0I also found O’Connors varied description of the pine trees to be interesting from “sullen” (69) to “hellish” to witnesses at the end of the story (78).<\/p>\n
This story’s central issue is “the lawn” which Mr. Fortune wishes to sell to Mr. Tillman to build a gas station in the name of progress (and also spite Mr. Pitts). \u00a0Marie Fortune strongly opposes (which is an understatement) Mr. Fortune on his plan as she plays with her siblings on “the lawn” and her father grazes her calves on it. \u00a0But most importantly she says, “we won’t be able to see the woods across the road” (63). \u00a0Mr. Fortune is confounded by her insistence on the importance being able to see these woods. \u00a0These conflicting ideas of nature come to a head on page 70 when Mr. Fortune looks out upon the view of the woods; “every time he saw the same thing: woods – not a mountain, not a waterfall, not any kind of planted bush or flower, just woods….A pine trunk is a pine trunk, he said to himself, and anybody that wants to see one don’t have to go far in this neighborhood” (70). \u00a0This quote reflects Mr. Fortune’s inability to find beauty in all nature. \u00a0For him nature ought to be either grand and majestic lie a mountain or waterfall or under man’s control to render it beautiful and orderly.<\/p>\n
I wonder what you all think of O’Connor’s emphasis on nature in this piece and what moral message she is trying to express with this conflict over the view of the woods?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I found O’Connor’s depiction of nature in the South to particularly compelling in her short story\u00a0“A View of the Woods.” \u00a0In her first paragraph she sets the scene for the story set between “the red corrugated lake” and the “black line of woods” (54). Her focus on dirt and clay is apparent throughout the story […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-flannery-oconnor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}