Hunting trips are used as a bonding experience between friends and as a break from the many struggles that life contains. Although in some circumstances people’s intentions can be misguided and harmful to others. In American author Tobias Wolff’s short story “Hunters in the Snow” (1980), he looks into the moral unawareness of three friends. Three men go on a hunting trip where one gets shot and the other two blindly attempt to take him to the hospital. Wolff utilizes setting, symbolism, and characterization to convey the selfishness of the three characters and their apathy towards others. Wolff’s use of setting makes the story have a more personal effect on the audience and sets up the mood that parallels the characters throughout their journey.
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Snow is both “hostile and uncaring” and that represents their attitudes towards each other at some time in the story (“What are three Symbols in ‘Hunters in the Snow’?”). Although snow seems very pure, innocent, and harmless in the beginning, after a while problems arise and it does not become quite so fun. Time only seems to prove that statement. At the beginning of the story Kenny and Frank tease Tub about his weight and play what they believe to be harmless jokes on him. Frank and Kenny continue to do this all the way through their hunting trip. The problem shadows how if snow is not dealt with properly it just piles up until it creates a huge mistake. The jokes finally cease when Kenny acts like he is upset and shoots a tree, then he shoots an old dog and finally it escalates until he pretends like he is going to shoot Tub but then Tub shoots Kenny out of protection. It is too late that tub finds out it was only of Kenny’s sick jokes that he was playing on Tub to get a few laughs out of a wasted hunting trip. To the reader it is almost as if Frank and Tub play a joke on Kenny themselves when they leave him in the back of the pickup and they go inside to eat pancakes. The Innocent Jokes that Kenny thought were so funny end up getting him shot and possibly even costing him his life. Snow similarly can eventually lead to major damage and harm even unto death although it is nice for a little while. The snow seems to represent the fun and innocence they once shared at the price of each other’s feeling but now amounts to an enormous problem each one of them face individually and as a whole group although they are not prepared for what they sowed. The snow that they played in when they were younger now has engulfed them and they are drowning in it but they found out when it was too
Snow is both “hostile and uncaring” and that represents their attitudes towards each other at some time in the story (“What are three Symbols in ‘Hunters in the Snow’?”). Although snow seems very pure, innocent, and harmless in the beginning, after a while problems arise and it does not become quite so fun. Time only seems to prove that statement. At the beginning of the story Kenny and Frank tease Tub about his weight and play what they believe to be harmless jokes on him. Frank and Kenny continue to do this all the way through their hunting trip. The problem shadows how if snow is not dealt with properly it just piles up until it creates a huge mistake. The jokes finally cease when Kenny acts like he is upset and shoots a tree, then he shoots an old dog and finally it escalates until he pretends like he is going to shoot Tub but then Tub shoots Kenny out of protection. It is too late that tub finds out it was only of Kenny’s sick jokes that he was playing on Tub to get a few laughs out of a wasted hunting trip. To the reader it is almost as if Frank and Tub play a joke on Kenny themselves when they leave him in the back of the pickup and they go inside to eat pancakes. The Innocent Jokes that Kenny thought were so funny end up getting him shot and possibly even costing him his life. Snow similarly can eventually lead to major damage and harm even unto death although it is nice for a little while. The snow seems to represent the fun and innocence they once shared at the price of each other’s feeling but now amounts to an enormous problem each one of them face individually and as a whole group although they are not prepared for what they sowed. The snow that they played in when they were younger now has engulfed them and they are drowning in it but they found out when it was too