It seems that in “The Lame Shall Enter First” and “A View of the Woods” Flannery O’Connor sends a very clear message that relates to the American Dream. In each story, the main character has a very clear goal that they are pursuing earnestly. Fortune wishes to mold his granddaughter in his own image and get her to denounce and betray her father and her family name. Sheppard believes he can “save” Johnson and (in a way) his son. In each case, the character obsesses over their goal, eventually taking extreme measures when things start to not go their way. Clearly however, neither achieve their goal, and instead their efforts result in unspeakable tragedy. It seems O’Connor is sending a cautionary message about\u00a0obsessively pursuing one’s ambitions, especially when they are unrealistic (in this case because they involve not material things but changing the minds of people). This sends a message we have seen before\u2013 one coming from Fitzgerald through The Great\u00a0Gatsby. Both Fitzgerald and O’Connor seem to be cautioning against pursuing something that cannot be guaranteed: the ability of one’s mind to change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It seems that in “The Lame Shall Enter First” and “A View of the Woods” Flannery O’Connor sends a very clear message that relates to the American Dream. In each story, the main character has a very clear goal that they are pursuing earnestly. Fortune wishes to mold his granddaughter in his own image and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":403,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-299","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\/299","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\/403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/english-1038-spring-2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}