IT is often unanticipated: purity wills violence. Even death. Although this is not initially the theme of the story of Isak, the character walking towards the woods:

The man comes, walking toward the north…A strong, coarse fellow, with a red iron beard, and little scars on face and hands…the figure of a man in this great solitude…

Isak is the character in Knut Hamsun’s novel Markens GrØde (published in 1917 in W. W. Worster’s English