“Doe Season: A Young Girls Transition” David Michael Kaplan’s short story “Doe Season”, is about a young girl named Andy who is going through some growing pains. She struggles with the changes that come along with becoming an adult and the gender roles that apply to her as a young woman. Charlie Spoon, Mac (Charlie’s son), Andy’s father and Andy embark on hunting trip that turns in to life changing event for Andy. The symbols used in “Doe Season” support the theme of the story: we all must grow and change and with that certain roles apply. “They were the same woods that lay behind her house, and they stretch all the way to here, she thought, for miles and miles, longer than I could walk in a day, or a week even, but they are still the same woods “(Kaplan 470). These are Andy’s thoughts about the woods behind her house. The woods symbolize consistency and make Andy feel safety and security when thinking about them and the fact that they always remain the same. This is parallel to her relationship with her father and the life she has led up to now, as a tom boy. She is ambivalent about growing up which is why she feels the way she does about the woods that stay the …show more content…
Her dream about the doe after shooting it shows her remorse and brings more symbolism to the story. The dream shows Andy’s curiosity as she examines the doe and the gunshot wound. As Andy touches the doe’s heart, “The heart quickened under her touch, becoming warmer and warmer until it was hot enough to burn. In pain, Andy tried to remove her hand, but the wound closed about it and held her fast” (Kaplan 479). She felt trapped, this is representative of her guilt (Q&A). The dream continues, “She cried in agony… her hand pulled free, following a stream of blood “(Kaplan479). The pain followed by the presence of blood is representative of uncomfortable changes of growing up and the consequences that come along with
In the short story Doe Season, by David Michael Kaplan, the nine-year-old protagonist, Andrea, also known as Andy, the tomboy goes out on a hunting trip and endures many different experiences. The theme of coming of age and the struggle most children are forced to experience when faced with the reality of having to grow up and leave childhood behind is presented in this story. Many readers of this story only see a girl going hunting with her father, his friend Charlie, and son Mac, because she wants to be one of the guys. An important aspect of the story that is often overlooked is that Andy is going hunting because she doesn't want to become a woman because she is afraid of the changes that will occur in her body.
A feminist lens analyzes how the female characters and their experiences are presented and explained in comparison to male characters (Lincoln School Providence). Merna Summers’ “The Skating Party” develops and demonstrates feminist themes in the ways in which the characters’ experiences, expectations, and lives are represented. Applying feminist critique unravels and deconstructs perceptions that shape and normalize the experiences of women in Willow Bunch while demonstrating the objectification and submission, standards of beauty, and ownership and empowerment that occur within the story.
In the beginning of Annie Dillard’s story, “An American Childhood,” she describes playing football and how she and her friend Mickey were chased after throwing snowballs at a man’s car. The author compares the chase scene and the description of football to convey that in both it is “all or nothing”.
The process of finding out who one is can be very turbulent and confusing. Through growing up one goes through so many different changes in terms of one's personality and deciding who they are and what they want to be. The little girl in David Kaplan's "Doe Season" goes through one of these changes, as do many other adolescents confused about who they are, and finds out that there are some aspects of a person's identity that cannot be changed no matter how hard he/she tries. Andy is a nine-year-old girl who doesn't want to grow up to be a woman. When she talks of the sea and how she remembers her mother loving it and how much she hated it is a clue that she prefers to be a "boy". The sea is symbolic of womanhood and the forest is symbolic of manhood.
Clearly, during the forest scene, Hawthorne is giving the reader a sense of how unnatural this family that came from a single adulterous act is. It sheds light on Hawthorne’s romantic views because it shows how an unnatural family is detestable. In a much more broad sense, it gives the reader a glimpse of Hawthorne’s own personal theology. He firmly believes in severe consequences for sin and it shows in his novel.
Her poetry is greatly informed by her childhood in hockey town Swift Current, Saskatchewan, with that environmental aesthetic often forming the backdrop to her stories of poverty, alcoholism, and the natural world. As a prairie girl myself, it’s easy for me to picture the agricultural landscapes and rustic animals described in poems such as “Inventing the Hawk”. Her authorial voice is wistful yet confessional, a voice that looks back fondly, but not blind to the issues of the past. Sex is also a recurring theme of her work, and the intimacies of her relationship with her husband Patrick Lane are a common topic of her work. One of her poems, “Watching My Lover”, tells of Lane bathing his dying mother, the mother’s scent lingering "so everyone who lies with him / will know he’s still / his mother’s son". Animals from cats to horses feature heavily in her work, tying in once again to her love of nature.
Suggested roles of all types set the stage for how human beings perceive their life should be. Gender roles are one of the most dangerous roles that society faces today. With all of the controversy applied to male vs. female dominance in households, and in the workplace, there seems to be an argument either way. In the essay, “Men as Success Objects”, the author Warren Farrell explains this threat of society as a whole. Farrell explains the difference of men and women growing up and how they believe their role in society to be. He justifies that it doesn’t just appear in marriage, but in the earliest stages of life. Similarly, in the essay “Roles of Sexes”, real life applications are explored in two different novels. The synthesis between these two essays proves how prevalent roles are in even the smallest part of a concept and how it is relatively an inevitable subject.
The woods and ocean are representative of two paths that Andrea is faced with. The woods being the path of a hunter and being surrounded by a male dominant setting. “That’s what the woods are all about anyway […] it’s where the woman don’t want to go.” Charlie said in paragraph 107. While the ocean is meant to represent a path filled with memories she had with her mother when she was a little girl. Andy saw that her mother’s swimsuit top had come off, so that her breasts swayed free, her nipples like two dark eyes. Embarrassed, Andy looked around (…) Her mother stood up unsteadily, regained her footing taking what seemed the longest time and she calmly refixed her top. (…) The sound of surf made her head ache.” In the this, Andrea shows signs of uncomfortableness when her mother has no top on. Meaning that she is afraid and slightly uncomfortable of having the same womanly parts as her mother. Being that they are two paths, Andrea must choose one. She allows her mind, and soul decide what path she is going to follow and thats when she chooses the path of the ocean. The path in which led her to accepting
The story by David Michael Kaplan "Doe Season" demonstrates Andy's journey into Womanhood. Andy's portrayed as someone who wants to fit in from the start without even realizing what she is doing."We are hunting, Andy thought"(Kaplan 474). This shows her innocence of not gathering the reality of what she is doing and proving that she is only thinking about how happy she is to be fitting in with the men. In the story, while driving to the location Charlie said "I don’t understand why she is coming" because he is a man who believes hunting is only for men and that gender roles should always be followed(Kaplan 473). "Doe Season" suggests that innocent girls that yearn to fit into the male world may act in harmful
In the poem “The One Girl at the Boys’ Party,” Sharon Olds uses imagery to convey pride in her daughter’s growing femininity. What would seem to be another childhood pool party for the girl turns into an event that marks a rite of passage to adulthood. Though the narrator is reluctant of her daughter’s search for an identity, she ultimately sees her daughter’s transformation to womanhood as admirable. Olds’ pride is first shown when the girl begins to lose her innocence from the unfamiliar surroundings of masculine men. The narrator says, “They will strip to their suits, her body hard and indivisible as a prime number” (5-6). The girl’s stiff and confident stature that this image conveys suggests that she is anxious yet willing to progress
Besides using the novel’s characters to convey her message, Morrison herself displays and shows the good and calmness that trees represent in the tree imagery in her narration. Perhaps Toni Morrison uses trees and characters’ responses to them to show that when one lives through an ordeal as horrible as slavery, one will naturally find comfort in the simple or seemingly harmless aspects of life, such as nature and especially trees. With the tree’s symbolism of escape and peace, Morrison uses her characters’ references to their serenity and soothing nature as messages that only in nature can these oppressed people find comfort and escape from unwanted thoughts. Almost every one of Morrison’s characters finds refuge in trees and nature, especially the main characters such as Sethe and Paul D. During Sethe’s time in slavery, she has witnessed many gruesome and horrible events that blacks endure, such as whippings and lynchings. However, Sethe seemingly chooses to remember the sight of sycamore trees over the sight of lynched boys, thus revealing her comfort in a tree’s presence: “Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamore trees in the world.
The metaphors and symbols these authors use through their imagery help us better understand the emotional state of the characters. Though Udall’s story “The Wig” ends with better lives for the characters involved, Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily,” is a more grim and macabre testament to the necessity of communication after loss. And, well, who knows what more strange habits the son might adopt in “The Wig,” had the father not embraced
The young girl in the story is struggling with finding her own gender identity. She would much rather work alongside her father, who was “tirelessly inventive” (Munro 328), than stay and work with her mother in the kitchen, depicted through, “As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what to do next” (329). The girl is torn between what her duties are suppose to be as a woman, and what she would rather be doing, which is work with her father. She sees her father’s work as important and worthwhile, while she sees her mother’s work as tedious and not meaningful. Although she knows her duties as a woman and what her mother expects of her, she would like to break the mould and become more like her father. It is evident that she likes to please her father in the work she does for him when her father says to the feed salesman, “Like to have you meet my new hired man.” I turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure (328-329). Even though the young girl is fixed on what she wants, she has influences from both genders i...
“Boys and Girls” is a short story, by Alice Munro, which illustrates a tremendous growing period into womanhood, for a young girl living on a fox farm in Canada, post World War II. The young girl slowly comes to discover her ability to control her destiny and her influences on the world. The events that took place over the course of the story helped in many ways to shape her future. From these events one can map the Protagonist’s future. The events that were drawn within the story provided the Protagonist with a foundation to become an admirable woman.
...ing used to them not living with me for college, I've realized that the cabin reassures the family bond, we have so greatly between each other, and gives the family hope that we can always have a place where the family, as one, is welcomed. Although we live in different cities, this place gives me the belief that my family will always be there. When the whole family is up at the cabin, it seems as if nothing has changed, as if the pine trees have not grown apart, or any taller. Th pine trees drop their children (pinecones) right next to the parent, never being able to leave. This symbolizes the feeling I get about my family while being up in the mountains at our cabin.