Analysis: Kiss Of The Fur Queen

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Kiss of the Fur Queen

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.
As Okimasis rides through the snow, dragged by his pack of dogs, he confronts various environmental obstacles. The imagery included throughout the passage illustrates the cutthroat and quick perceptions of the nature surrounding the situation. The sled glides over the “creaking snow” of the “one hundred and fifty miles of low-treed tundra.” The representation of the area allows for clear pictures to develop mentally. At this point in the passage, both Okimasis and the huskies are exhausted. They’ve been drained of

their energy, which the environment greatly contributed to. It is beyond difficult to tread through miles of rough terrain, and this is displayed through the description of the habitat. Ultimately, the image drawn of the “freezing temperatures and freezing winds” reiterates the intense conditions that Okimasis and the dogs must go through.
In addition to battling with the weather conditions while racing, Okimasis also rumbles against himself.

Through the diction and description of the scene, a clear vision of Okimasis’ internal thoughts are drawn out. The most important task to him is winning because he made a promise to his wife. For the ending moments, “these thoughts rac[ed] through his fevered mind.” Okimasis’ wife threatened him with divorce in order to motivate him, so “on the pain and separation of divorce” Okimasis pushed passed a couple of other competitors. As his thoughts are explained throughout the excerpt, the desperate tone in his internal and external conflicts are heard. Okimasis wants nothing more than to keep his promise to his wife and he is constantly reminding himself of how far the finish line is. Push after push, “half a mile to the finish line”, it was “so close, so far.” The description of his thoughts gives the race a purpose. He is not doing this just for fun, but it is now because his marriage is on the

line.
On top of Okimasis’ continuous struggle with his thoughts, he is further confronted with the challenge of his partial control over the huskies. He desperately wants to win, but the problem is that the dogs are the ones in the position to decide if they can win or not. However, at this point in the race, the huskies are “beyond tired” and have “vapour rising from [their] panting mouths.” The details of the exhaustion coming from the dogs display the crazy battle going on. The only action that Okimasis can do is command the dogs to keep running. Overall, this is a difficult obstacle that he needs to get through because he is battling a beast that is not in his full control.
Conclusively, the literary devices included in the passage evidently dramatized Okimasis’ experience. The imagery allowed for clear mental illustrations of the various scenes and thoughts in the passage, while the details created tension and suspense. Since the winner is not revealed in the excerpt, the details build up to a nonexistent climax, which precisely causes emotions to fluster. Even though there is a cliffhanger at the end of the passage, the literary devices used reveal multiple internal and external conflicts.