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A View Of The Woods Analysis

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“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful” (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, 1978). O’Connor masterfully develops this theme in her moral story, “A View of the Woods.” Mark and Mary Fortune are the two main characters who have different views of a patch woods and the value they hold. The story surrounds the unraveling of a relationship and the ultimate fate of both. O’Connor uses the woods not only as the central conflict but also to represent the salvation found in Jesus Christ and the pain it can cause in both acceptance or rejection. The role of the woods is vital to bring into the central conflict between Mary and Mark which is keeping or selling “the lawn” and to give Mary a choice to be a Pitts or a Fortune. Where the altercation begins is when he first mentions selling “the lawn” to Mary. “I am going to sell the lot right in front of the house for a gas station.” Mary with sadness and shock tried pleading with Mark through the rest of the story by bringing up “That’s where we play,” they won’t be able to see “the woods across the road,” they won’t “be able to see the woods from the porch,” and finally she brings up that her “daddy grazes his calves on that lot.” Mark Fortune gets irritated by her through the story by saying that Mr. Pitts “can graze them somewhere else” and explains that he does not “give a damn hoot where [Pitts] grazes his calves.” At the end of the story which is its climax and
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