"Doe Season" question #3

As the story begins Andy is thinking about the woods and going hunting. "They were the same woods that lay behind her house, and they stretch all the way to here, she thought, for miles and miles, longer than I could walk in a day, or a week even, but they are still the same woods. This thought made her feel good: it was like thinking of God: it was like thinking of the space between here and the moon: it was like thinking of all the foreign countries form her geography book where even now,..."(456) The woods did not scare Andy, but gave her comfort, much like her childhood and the things in her childhood that protect her. On page 459, paragraph 45 Andy recalls a vacation she took to the ocean with her family. She thinks of the ocean because the strong winds blowing through the treetops remind her of the sound of the ocean. The sound of the ocean is frightening to her, and the woods is also becoming more frightening to her as she spends that time there on her hunting trip. She is beginning to realize she is growing up and that is what is causing her the fright. She thinks she is beginning to smell the air of the ocean while they are in the woods (459). Then she says "But that was impossible, the ocean is hundreds of miles away, farther than Canada even." (459) That to me says that she is thinking that it is impossible that she already feels like she is growing up in to adulthood, it should be many years away. She talks more descriptively about the ocean and why it scares her. " Everything lay hidden. If you walked in it, you couldn't see how deep it was or what might be below; if you swam, something could pull you under and you'd never be seen again." (459) This parallels to Andy's thoughts of adulthood, she is frightened of it just as she is of the ocean because of the unknown. The ocean does not give her comfort like the woods that she feels is the same as it is in her own back yard because that is familiar and comfortable to her. The ocean is the unknown and the woods is comfort just like adulthood and childhood.