"[Two] Hunters in the Snow"

"'I'm going to the hospital,' Kenny said.  But he was wrong.  They had taken a different turn a long way back," (237).

This blog is in response to question number eight for "Hunters in the Snow."

Personally, I am quite the fan of irony, but this was just plain depressing. I mean, not only did Tub and Frank force Kenny to lie in the trunk bleeding to death while they drank coffee twice (thank you cold weather for slowing down blood slow so that Kenny had a slow death?), but they went on to trust their memories for about fifty miles worth of direction.

There were so many times when Wolff could have came out of his position to talk to us, but decided to save all of the gun power until the last two sentences.  Why?  When Kenny first brought up Frank's affair, the narrator could have given us the scoop or when Kenny shot the dog, the narrator could have told us something about the farmer's plea, but instead, Wolff waited until the end when it was unexpected.

The biggest irony in this for more came from the fact that it followed the phrase that Kenny had said multiple times throughout the story already.  Nothing would have given away the fact that something bad was to follow expect for the fact that there was only one line left in the story and nothing had came that would signal a conclusion until now.

By coming out of character and telling us something that the characters did not know, the reader is allowed to make a choice on the ending of the story.  This conclusion is based on which characters the reader related to throughout the story.  I related to Frank, so I feel like he had planned to get rid of his friend.  No one would take two breaks, take the directions into the bar, and then forget them on the counter and not even think to go back to get them.  Not only this, but they didn't take a "wrong" turn, but a "different" turn.  Now, the question says that the characters did not know that they were not going the correct way, so he is really probably mocking how clueless these characters were.

Was this story a farce?

"Hunters in the Snow"

"Frank roused himself.  'Kenny,' he said.  He bent down and put his gloved hand on Kenny's brow. 'You shot him,' he said to Tub," (pg 193).

Let me just throw out two things that I will be basing all of my thoughts on, but if they are wrong, then my whole post is set to fail (not grade wise hopefully, but like, analysis wise).

• The climax of the story is Tub shooting Kenny.
• Frank is a dynamic character.

Now that this is out of the way, I will go on to explain these two sentences importance to question number four and why my group was correct in calling Frank the most likable character (Note: I am doing this on my desktop that uses Internet Explorer which does not have spell check).

I suppose I should have pointed out that my answer to the question is that Frank was the character most changed by the climax of the story, but I assumed that this was going to be implied by the bullets (no pun intended).

In the beginning of the novel, Tub was waiting on the curb, alone, while Kenny decides to fake running him over with the car while Frank sits in the passenger seat.  Kenny and Frank go on to hunt together and leave Tub on his own on the other side of the river as they joke around and laugh (Why would they be laughing when Kenny was so angry about hunting nothing unless they were joking about Tub?).  Up to this point, Frank has said very little of his own thoughts, but rather just plays along with Kenny's point of view.

This is where I point out that Frank was the only of the three not directly involved in the shooting.

Post-shooting, Tub and Frank are now always seen together while Kenny is stuck being the one alone in the back of the truck.  This may seem trivial since Kenny was shot and all, but the relationship shared between Tub and Frank during these times goes on to show that Frank almost matured or had a relook at things when he saw his friends feud.  While Frank was with Kenny, he never spoke his mind and Kenny even black mailed Frank about his affair, but Frank had the guts to confide the affair with Tub after the encounter.

Frank forcing Tub to eat the pancakes was not a "cold-hearted" or "mean" encounter by any means in my interpretation.  What better way to say, "We all have faults and thank you for confiding them with me, but I will never judge you by it," than by letting Tub be himself afterwards?