An Analysis of Doe Season - Book Report/Review Example

You’re 8 May 2006 An Analysis of Doe Season This short story evidently was centered on the theme of life, death, and maturinginto adulthood with an emphasis on specific learning experiences and the thoughts these experiences invoked, as well as the emotions they created in the mind of one specific character in the story. In Doe Season, the main character was situated around a young girl named, “Andy” who decides she would like to go on the hunting adventure with her father, his friend “Charlie Spreun”, and the son who is 11 years old. She has never actually witnessed her father hunting nor has she seen a doe killed before so the experience in itself leaves an impression on her that is one filled with sorrow, and it could be said disgust as well for the way in which the doe dies and her realization that she is responsible for taking its life. Therefore, the ideal point of the story is encircled around Andy and how she must learn to accept certain aspects in general about life and death in order to grow and develop into an adult from them. There are a number of different themes in the story that are brought about in a reminiscent way during the hunting excursion. However the main theme in the story is about how a young child must come to terms with the idea of injuring another life and ending it and then moving on from that experience to understand her own life and the part that she plays within the meaning of life and death. For example, Andy has to learn that inevitably everything must die one way or another; it simply is a part of living. However she has a hard time adjusting to this in the story and it leads to odd dreams and other thoughts in her mind about what she has done and how it will affect her life. An idea of this is in the thoughts she is having during the hunting trip for example, at one point Andy is remembering the first time she ever saw the ocean. In “Doe Season, her idea of it is described best in the following quote from the story, “that was the first time she had seen the ocean, and it frightened her. It was huge and empty, yet always moving. Everything lay hidden.” (345-346). She recalls the fear she had due to it’s great vastness and the huge waves of it yet she was fascinated by it as well and seemingly subconsciously saw it as something beautiful and mysterious. In many ways this could be seen as a way in which Andy is growing into adulthood and learning about things in the world that she never knew existed before. She is inevitably coming to an understanding about her own self and that image of herself. Her mother plays a part in this as well for it is through her that Andy is able to grasp a small initial idea about what it is like to become a woman. For example, when Andy’s mom accidentally exposes her breasts due to losing her bathing suit, Andy sees this and is caught off guard by the experience. This brings Andy to the realization that one day she will develop into a woman like her mom where before she did not know any of this. It scares her because she comes to understand that in order to develop into a young woman she has to let go of the entirety of child like things she has ever known. This gives a hint again of losing the innocence of childhood in order to continue to grow and mature in life. This part of the story and the theme it projects is obviously about growing up and learning that we do not stay wide-eyed innocent little children forever but must eventually develop into adults. The ocean is representative of Andy’s fear of moving from a child into a more independent and developed individual, it scares her to some degree but she soon comes to accept the facts that she is discovering about herself and her life. This still illustrates the innocent ideas that Andy has about life in general. She is filled with wonderment over things she is unfamiliar with, explicitly like that of hunting the deer and pulling the trigger on the gun for the first time. At the same time the idea is given that these new thoughts and images scare her, she is accepting of them to a certain degree. The narrator defines the fact that Andy has never shot anything before and therefore has no idea what it is actually like to take another living being’s life until she actually does so. Before hand however, as has been stated, she is extremely excited about going hunting and even wants a deer to appear before her in the forest so she will have a chance to actually hunt it and bring it down, even though she has no idea what this entails. The story focuses in on how Andy prays before they leave to go hunting, “Please let us get a deer” (348). This details how anxious she is to learn about the experience she is involved in and is eager to better understand it. However when the 11 year old boy begins telling her about how they sometimes remove the penis from the deer, this repulses Andy because she has never even heard of a penis yet alone seen one. Mac tells her that the procedure that is done is known as “hog dressing” and from his explanation it draws Andy to the conclusion that perhaps hunting was not what she had imagined it was going to be. For her it was turning into an experience that she was reluctant to be a part of at times because she was finding out about things she did not want to know and it took her innocent idea of it and twisted and turned it into something she found disgusting and vile. This can be seen after she has shot the deer and it runs away and she silently asks herself, “What have I done?” (352). That night, before she dreams Andy hears an Owl off in the woods. The history of Owls are defined as creatures that bring dreams of truth to an individual who is struggling with the knowledge that they have about something they might have done yet they don’t feel good about, such as Andy’s feelings about shooting the deer. In this regard the Owl could be recognized as a sort of epiphany for Andy, helping her to come to an understanding of what her actions have caused. Her dream is more of a nightmare in that the deer visits her yet it has the gaping wound on its side that she caused when she shot it. When analyzing this the reader can gain an idea that the beauty of life that the deer once held has now been taken away and the harsh reality of what has transpired is pressed upon. In Andy’s dream she continuously saw what in reality her mind did not want to see, “the doe falling, falling, and then rising again, repeating itself whenever she closed her eyes”. From this descriptive line the reader can gleam the idea that life is not always beautiful and perfect and one must come to the realization that the reality of life is marred with ugly truths that are sometimes hard to accept. This is exactly what Andy is trying to deal with yet she is unable to do on a conscious level and therefore her dreams take over her thoughts and lead her to the understanding of life and death through them. When they find the deer the next morning it is shocking to Andy and she is saddened but the outcome she sees before her is not what she had envisioned it would be. Her feelings are concreted upon when her father cuts the deer open. Actually seeing this take place outside of her dream brings the harsh reality of it all rushing at Andy and she runs away from what she sees. At this point the story shows Andy feeling she is losing all the beautiful images she had of life and what it meant to be alive. When she realizes how brutal life can really be for another living creature it changes her whole outlook and ultimately she continues to lose her innocence bit by bit as the narrator continues the story. What she has done finally dawns on her in all of its ugliness to her child-like mind. She decides that hunting is something that is ugly and that she never wants to be a part of again. However, for the men in the story they were extremely excited by it all and could not understand her feelings of sadness and disgust. What Andy had come to realize was that it was wrong to take life because it brought ugliness, especially if the act was just for sport and not for sustenance to live? The men could not see the point in this however and to them again, it was all for fun and games. At this point Andy turns away from having any thing to do with it, coming to an understanding within her self that hunting was solely a male’s sport and not meant for the female gender at all. In fact, from this point Andy wants to lose her nickname and use her real name Andrea. This can be seen in the passage of the story where her father, Mac, and Spreun are all calling out to her, “Andy, Andy, but that wasn’t her name, she not longer wanted to be called that.” (316) She wants no part of the male identity in her role and decides to focus more fluidly on developing her female persona from that point on. In conclusion the whole hunting experience produced a major shift in Andy’s life. The dream for certain played a major part of this because what she couldn’t deal with in reality her subconscious helped her to understand through her dreams. Although it was a horrible experience for her to endure she realized at the same time that it brought her to a far better interpretation of her own self and femininity. She discovered that life is not always perfect and that in growing up one has to discover certain aspects about themselves and living on their own in order to move from one phase into another. Life is a journey, even if it means confronting the idea of death and what it means as well. Read More