An Analysis Of Tobias Wolff's 'Hunters In The Snow'

340 Words1 Page

In “Hunters in the Snow," Tobias Wolff demonstrates that a hostile environment, created by nature and human relations, can lead the weakest member of the pack to assert his dominance over the others in order to survive. One of the main protagonists, Tub, finds himself immerse in a hostile environment. Nature around him is cold, wild, and it takes everything he has in him to make his path through the forest, tripping, and panting. His exhaustion is not only physical, but also mental, as his friends Frank and Kenny relentlessly humiliate, and torment him. Those conditions exacerbate his complex of inferiority, prompting his survival instinct, and forcing him to assert his dominance over his companions. Kenny cedes his status of leader of the

Show More
Related

  • The Snowy Heron Chapter 6 Summary

    643 Words  | 2 Pages

    • In the gym, the gym teacher announced that they were going to start a new unit. The new unit was volleyball.

    Read More

  • Comparing The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963 and My Brother Sam Is Dead

    717 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...st to see whether being like Byron is the right way to go, Kenny takes a swim in a dangerous body of water, which is something that even Byron would not have attempted. As a result, Kenny comes close to drowning, and he needs the assistance of his older brother to get himself out of the life-threatening situation. From then on, Kenny decides to take the path that his parents had arranged for him. Both in similar situations but facing different obstacles, Tim and Kenny finally establish strong minds that could tell the difference between right and wrong. These codes would later guide them through difficult quandaries and dilemmas.

    Read More

  • Comparing Winter Evening And Stories Of Snow By P. K. Page

    844 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Winter Evening” by Archibald Lampman, and “Stories of Snow” by P.K Page are two poems describing the human experience of winter. Winter is seen, by some, to be blissful, magical and serene. Winter could also be described as pure and heavenly, with the white snow resembling clouds. However, others have a contrasting viewpoint; they paint winter in harsher light, giving the impression that winter is bitter and ruthless. Others still, have a mixed viewpoint and may recognize both the positives and negatives to the season.

    Read More

  • Powerful Imagery and Settings in David Guterson’s Snow Falling on Cedars

    1482 Words  | 3 Pages

    Snow Falling on Cedars, a novel by David Guterson, is a post World War II drama set in 1954 on the island of San Piedro in Washington State. The story’s focal point is the murder trial of Kabuo Miyamoto, who is accused of killing a fellow islander, Carl Heine, Jr., supposedly because of an old family feud over land. Although the trial is the main focus of the story, Guterson takes the reader back in time through flashbacks to tell a story of forbidden love involving two young islanders, Ishmael Chambers and Hatsue Imada (Kabuo’s future wife). At the time of their romance, interracial relationships were considered strictly taboo because of racial bias. It is through both this love story and Guterson’s remarkable use of setting and imagery that the reader is informed as to why racial prejudice is so high on the island of San Piedro at the time of the trial and why Kabuo is not merely on trial for Carl’s murder, but also for the color of his skin.

    Read More

  • Commentary On The Essay 'Why I Hunt' By Rick Bass

    1129 Words  | 3 Pages

    For many people, hunting is just a sport, but for some it is a way of life. In Rick Bass’s “Why I Hunt” he explains how he got to where he lives now and what he thinks of the sport of hunting. There are many things in the essay that I could not agree more with, and others that I strongly disagree. Overall this essay provides a clear depiction of what goes through the mind of a hunter in the battle of wits between them and the animal.

    Read More

  • Ironic Circumstances in Greasy Lake by T.C. Boyle

    1157 Words  | 3 Pages

    The viewpoint of the world that the narrator has, completely alters as certain events take place throughout the story. His outlook on nature transforms into a wholly different standpoint as the story progresses. As his tale begins, the narrator sees himself as a tough guy or “bad character”. He believes he is invincible. There is nobody as cool as he is or as dangerous as him and his friends are. With his followers, the narrator goes to Greasy Lake, he takes in the nature that surrounds him. He thinks of himself to be a kid who knows everything. To him, the lake represents a night of misbehavior and partying. The unhealthy, treacherous atmosphere of Greasy Lake is alluring, fun, and exciting to someone as threatening as he is. “We went up to the lake because everyone went there, because we wanted to snuff the rich sent of possibility on the breeze, watch a girl take off her clothes and plunge into the festering murk, drink beer, smoke pot, howl at the stars, savor the incongruous full-throated roar of rock and roll against the primeval susurrus of frogs and crickets. This was nature.” This quote gives a clear idea of what the narrators perception of what not only nature is, but of what the world is. He lives to have fun. He is fearless and lives for the moment. All that life is to him is sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

    Read More

  • Analysis: Kiss Of The Fur Queen

    589 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the excerpt from Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen, a hunter, Abraham Okimasis, pushes through an intense race with his dogs in the snow. Literary devices, such as imagery and details, reveal the internal and external struggles of Okimasis’ life during the race. His fight to the finish gradually creates suspense as he continues to scramble with the idea losing, while he also battles with nature, self, and beast.

    Read More

  • Hunters in the Snow by Tobias Wolff

    871 Words  | 2 Pages

    As the story, Hunters in the Snow, progresses, the egotistical behaviors of the characters become even more apparent given the lack of sympathy when Kenny is gravely injured. Both Tub and Frank, for example, do not react as most friends would; as moral and compassionate friends would. Surprisingly, Tub, the individual who shoots Kenny in self-defense, shows neither guilt nor regret for his action as he watches his hunting companion collapse in pain. Tub as well as Frank pays no heed to Kenny’s distress as he lies in excruciating pain; basically, neither man shows a degree of remorse for their friend’s pain. For instance, both men are in no rush to transport Kenny to the hospital since they decide to stop at a tavern to get warm and leave Kenny in the truck in utter anguish.

    Read More

  • Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat

    1375 Words  | 3 Pages

    of the wolves and finds that they are more than the savage and merciless hunters

    Read More

  • Ishmael Beah's Loneliness

    675 Words  | 2 Pages

    Even as a young child alone in the forest, Beah states that the loneliness was what made the forest a difficult place to inhabit. Nature also used to be something that comforted him prior to the war, but this was due to the stories his grandparents used to tell him. Even with nature all around him, Beah is unable to focus on what used to bring him happiness, trading it in for loneliness instead, which demonstrates how much not having his family has affected him. In addition, after Beah runs into a group of boys, three of which he used to go to school with, he joins them on their journey to find safety. They find a house off the coast of the Atlantic, which turns out to be a fishing hut of a kind man who hosts the boys. The boy’s host refuses to reveal his name to them, but understands that Beah and his group mean to do no harm to him, and that they are only children, something that had been forgotten by other villagers the group had encountered. After a few days, Beah and his friend’s begin to talk more to each other in the hut as their spirits were able to be lifted for the short time

    Read More

  • The Theme of Deception in Hunters in the Snow

    803 Words  | 2 Pages

    The short story Hunters in the Snow by Tobias Wolff depicts three men that go on a hunting trip that changes the course of their lives. Each character lies to himself to accept his actions in his life. Kenny, Frank, and Tub need to successfully fool themselves before they can deceive anyone else. Each of the men are immature and selfish. They don't realize how their decisions impact other people's lives. They justify their lies with their own insecurities about their lifestyles. Their lies impact the situations they encounter and change their lives forever.

    Read More

  • interlopers

    2147 Words  | 5 Pages

    The forest lands of Gradwitz were of wide extent and well stocked with game; the narrow strip of precipitous woodland that lay on its outskirt was not remarkable for the game it harboured or the shooting it afforded, but it was the most jealously guarded of all its owner's territorial possessions. A famous law suit, in the days of his grandfather, had wrested it from the illegal possession of a neighbouring family of petty landowners; the dispossessed party had never acquiesced in the judgment of the Courts, and a long series of poaching affrays and similar scandals had embittered the relationships between the families for three generations. The neighbour feud had grown into a personal one since Ulrich had come to be head of his family; if there was a man in the world whom he detested and wished ill to it was Georg Znaeym, the inheritor of the quarrel and the tireless game-snatcher and raider of the disputed border-forest. The feud might, perhaps, have died down or been compromised if the personal ill-will of the two men had not stood in the way; as boys they had thirsted for one another's blood, as men each prayed that misfortune might fall on the other, and this wind-scourged winter night Ulrich had banded together his foresters to watch the dark forest, not in quest of four-footed quarry, but to keep a look-out for the prowling thieves whom he suspected of being afoot from across the land boundary. The roebuck, which usually kept in the sheltered hollows during a storm-wind, were running like driven things to-night, and there was movement and unrest among the creatures that were wont to sleep through the dark hours. Assuredly there was a disturbing element in the forest, and Ulrich could guess the quarter from whence it came.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis Of Hunters In The Snow

    710 Words  | 2 Pages

    Kenny and Frank walk on one side of the creek and Tub walks on the other bank. All the way on their hunting path they had problems with the snow, especially Tub, who tends to swim in the deep snow, sometimes breaking through the hard crust that supports the lighter weight of the two other men. The frozen crust collapses under his weight, therefore he soon stops looking for traces and only tries to keep up with his friends (51). Their hunt was unsuccessful, they find no sign of deer and start returning in the trail that Tub has

    Read More

  • The Company Of Wolf Analysis

    1614 Words  | 4 Pages

    For the characters in Angela Carter's “The Company of Wolves,” danger lurks in the the grey areas, the ambiguous spaces between opposites. The plethora of socially constructed binaries—male and female, passive and active, innocence and maturity, civilization and wilderness, man and wolf—have the ability to be harmful and restrictive, but perhaps more worryingly, they create an ill-defined middle ground between where the rules are vague and fluid, which allows for dishonesty and deception, and Carter foregrounds the resultant proliferation of untruths as the real peril. One vehicle for clear and honest communication, however, is the narrator's changing characterization of the

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Pushkin's 'The Blizzard'

    105 Words  | 1 Pages

    In many ways it mimics sentimentalism. Its sappy narrative is just what one could expect to come from a woman like miss K.I.T whom we are given the impression of as a silly women from the country.6 By making the teller silly and not someone to emulate, Pushkin highlights the shame the reader should feel at agreeing with her in literary preferences. How do we know her preferences? The manner in which she writes her story is not simply telling a story, but emplotting one and this means using literary elements to do so. Therefore, “The Blizzard” is the art of the writing sentimentalism badly.

    Read More

More about An Analysis Of Tobias Wolff's 'Hunters In The Snow'

Open Document