Expert answer:The following questions are designed to help you think about different aspects of Wolff’s, Munro’s, Walker’s, and Welty’s stories. You can choose any question you want. Answer at least 6 questions,no more than 3 for one article and, most importantly, add new questions of your own to promote active discussion.The discussion should about 500-600 words.Tobias Wolff’s “Hunters in the Snow”1.Discuss the way Tub is presented in the opening scene.Does your assessment of his character change in the later scenes?1.2. How does the cold, hostile environment in the story relate to its meaning? 3. Which is the most sympathetic of the three characters? The story deals, in part, with the power struggle among the characters. Which character is the most powerful?Do the balance of power and alliances between the characters shift as the story proceeds?4. How do the physical descriptions of the characters help us to understand them?For example, how is Tub’s obesity relevant to his character?5. What is the purpose of the scene in which Frank and Tub stop at the tavern for food and coffee, leaving the wounded Kenny in the back of the truck? During their conversation, Frank analyzes his own character and expresses remorse. Are his insights and remorse genuine?Why or why not?6. The final plot twist comes in the last two sentences of the story. Here the narrator speaks directly to the reader, giving us information the characters don’t know. How is this an appropriate conclusion to the story?What final statement is being made about the characters?Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use”1.Characterize the speaker and evaluate her reliability as a reporter and interpreter of events. Where does she refrain from making judgments? Where does she present less than the full truth?Do these examples of reticence undercut her reliability?2.Describe as fully as possible the lives of the mother, Dee, and Maggie prior to the events of the story. How are the following incidents from the past also reflected in the present actions:(a) Dee’s hatred of the old house; (b) Dee’s ability “to stare down any disaster”; (c) Maggie’s burns from the fire; (d) the mother’s having been “hooked on the side” while milking a cow; (e) Dee’s refusal to accept a quilt when she went away to college?3.Does the mother’s refusal to let Dee have the quilts indicate a permanent or temporary change of character? Why has she never done anything like it before? Why does she do it now?What details in the story prepare for and foreshadow that refusal?4.How does the physical setting give support to the contrasting attitudes of both the mother and Dee?Does the author indicate that one or the other of them is entirely correct in her feelings about the house and yard?5.Is Dee wholly unsympathetic? Is the mother’s victory over her altogether positive?What emotional ambivalence is there in the final scene between Maggie and her mother in the yard?
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HUNTERS IN THE SNOW
BY: TOBIAS WOLFF
CATEGORY: LITERATURE – SHORT STORIES
HUNTERS IN THE SNOW
BY
TOBIAS WOLFF
Tub had been waiting for an hour in the falling snow. He paced the sidewalk to keep
warm and stuck his head out over the curb whenever he saw lights approaching. One
driver stopped for him but before Tub could wave the man on he saw the rifle on
Tub’s back and hit the gas. The tires spun on the ice. The fall of snow thickened. Tub
stood below the overhang of a building. Across the road the clouds whitened just
above the rooftops, and the street lights went out. He shifted the rifle strap to his
other shoulder. The whiteness seeped up the sky.
A truck slid around the corner, horn blaring, rear end sashaying. Tub moved to the
sidewalk and held up his hand. The truck jumped the curb and kept coming, half on
the street and half on the sidewalk. It wasn’t slowing down at all. Tub stood for a
moment, still holding up his hand, then jumped back. His rifle slipped off his
shoulder and clattered on the ice, a sandwich fell out of his pocket. He ran for the
steps of the building. Another sandwich and a package of cookies tumbled onto the
new snow. He made the steps and looked back.
A truck had stopped several feet beyond where Tub had been standing. He picked up
his sandwiches and his cookies and slung the rifle and went up to the driver’s
window. The driver was bent against the steering wheel, slapping his knees and
drumming his feet on the floorboards. He looked like a cartoon of a person laughing,
except that his eyes watched the man on the seat beside him. “You ought to see
yourself,” the driver said. “He looks just like a beach ball with a hat on, doesn’t he?
Doesn’t he, Frank?”
The man beside him smiled and looked off.
“You almost ran me down,” Tub said. “You could’ve killed me.”
“Come on, Tub, said the man beside the driver. “Be mellow. Kenny was just messing
around.” He opened the door and slid over to the middle of the seat.
Tub took the bolt out of his rifle and climbed in beside him. “I waited an hour,” he
said. “If you meant ten o’clock why didn’t you say ten o’clock?”
“Tub, you haven’t done anything but complain since we got here,” said the man in
the middle. “If you want to piss and moan all day you might as well go home and
bitch at your kids. Take your pick.” When Tub didn’t say anything he turned to the
driver. “Okay, Kenny, let’s hit the road.”
Some juvenile delinquents had heaved a brick through the windshield on the driver’s
side, so the cold and snow tunneled right into the cab. The ehater didn’t work. They
covered themselves with a couple of blankets Kenny had brought along and pulled
down the muffs on their caps. Tub tried to keep his hands warm by rubbing them
under the blanket but Frank made him stop.
They left Spokane and drove deep into the country, running along black lines of
fences. The snow let up, but still there was no edge to the land where it met the sky.
Nothing moved in the chalky fields. The cold bleached their faces and made the
stubble stand out on their cheeks and along their upper lips. They stopped twice for
coffee before they got to the woods where Kenny wanted to hunt.
Tub was for trying someplace different; two years in a row they’d been up and down
this land and hadn’t seen a thing. Frank didn’t care one way or the other, he just
wanted to get out of the goddamned truck. “Feel that,” Frank said, slamming the
door. He spread his feet and closed his eyes and leaned his head way back and
breathed deeply. “Tune in on that energy.”
“Another thing,” Kenny said. “This is open land. Most of the land around here is
posted.”
“I’m cold,” Tub said.
Frank breathed out. “Stop bitching, Tub. Get centered.”
“I wasn’t bitching.”
“Centered,” Kenny said. “Next thing you’ll be wearing a nightgown, Frank. Selling
flowers out at the airport.”
“Kenny,” Frank said, “you talk too much.”
“Okay,” Kenny said. “I won’t say a word. Like I won’t say anything about a certain
babysitter.”
“What babysitter?” Tub asked.
“That’s between us,” Frank said, looking at Kenny. “That’s confidential. You keep
your mouth shut.”
Kenny laughed.
“You’re asking for it,” Frank said.
“Asking for what?”
“You’ll see.”
“Hey,” Tub said, “are we hunting or what?”
They started off across the field. Tub had trouble getting through the fences. Frank
and Kenny could have helped him; they could have lifted up on the top wire and
stepped on the bottom wire, but they didn’t. They stood and watched him. There
were a lot of fences and Tub was puffing when they reached the woods.
They hunted for over two hours and saw no deer, no tracks, no sign. Finally they
stopped by the creek to eat. Kenny had several slices of pizza and a couple of candy
bars: Frank had a sandwich, an apple, two carrots, and a square of chocolate; Tub
ate one hard-boiled egg and a stick of celery.
“You ask me how I want to die today,” Kenny said. “I’ll tell you burn me at the
stake.” He turned to Tub. “You still on that diet?” He winked at Frank.
“What do you think? You think I like hard-boiled eggs?”
“All I can say is, it’s the first diet I ever heard of where you gained weight from it.”
“Who said I gained weight?”
“Oh, pardon me. I take it back. You’re just wasting away before my very eyes. Isn’t
he, Frank?”
Frank had his fingers fanned out, tips against the bark of the stump where he’d laid
his food. His knuckles were hairy. He wore a heavy wedding band and on his right
pinky another gold ring with a flat face and an “F” in what looked like diamonds. He
turned the ring this way and that. “Tub,” he said, “you haven’t seen your own balls
in ten years.”
Kenny doubled over laughing. He took off his hat and slapped his leg with it.
“What am I supped to do?” Tub said. “It’s my glands.”
They left the woods and hunted along the creek. Frank and Kenny worked one bank
and Tub worked the other, moving upstream. The snow was light but the drifts were
deep and hard to move through. Wherever Tub looked the surface was smooth,
undisturbed, and after a time he lost interest. He stopped looking for tracks and just
tried to keep up with Frank and Kenny on the other side. A moment came when he
realized he hadn’t seen them in a long time. The breeze was moving from him to
them; when it stilled he could sometimes hear Kenny laughing but that was all. He
quickened his pace, breasting hard into the drifts, fighting away the snow with his
knees and elbows. He heard his heart and felt the flush on his face but he never once
stopped.
Tub caught up with Frank and Kenny at a bend of the creek. They were standing on
a log that stretched from their bank to his. Ice had backed up behind the log. Frozen
reeds stuck out, barely nodding when the air moved.
“See anything?” Frank asked.
Tub shook his head.
There wasn’t much daylight left and they decided to head back toward the road.
Frank and Kenny crossed the log and they started downstream, using the trail Tub
had broken. Before they had gone very far Kenny stopped. “Look at that,” he said,
and pointed to some tracks going form the creek back into the woods. Tub’s
footprints crossed right over them. There on the bank, plain as day, were several
mounds of deer sign. “What do you think that is, Tub?” Kenny kicked at it. “Walnuts
on vanilla icing?”
“I guess I didn’t notice.”
Kenny looked at Frank.
“I was lost.”
“You were lost. Big deal.”
They followed the tracks into the woods. The deer had gone over a fence half buried
in drifting snow. A no hunting sign was nailed to the top of one of the posts. Frank
laughed and said the son of a bitch could read. Kenny wanted to go after him but
Frank said no way, the people out here didn’t mess around. He thought maybe the
farmer who owned the land would let them use it if they asked. Kenny wasn’t so
sure. Anyway, he figured that by the time they walked to the truck and drove up the
road and doubled back it would be almost dark.
“Relax,” Frank said. “You can’t hurry nature. If we’re meant to get that deer, we’ll
get it. If we’re not, we won’t.”
They started back toward the truck. This part of the woods was mainly pine. The
snow was shaded and had a glaze on it. It held up Kenny and Frank but Tub kept
falling through. As he kicked forward, the edge of the crust bruised his shins. Kenny
and Frank pulled ahead of him, to where he couldn’t even hear their voices any
more. He sat down on a stump and wiped his face. He ate both the sandwiches and
half the cookies, taking his own sweet time. It was dead quiet. When Tub crossed
the last fence into the toad the truck started moving. Tub had to run for it and just
managed to grab hold of the tailgate and hoist himself into the bed. He lay there,
panting. Kenny looked out the rear window and grinned. Tub crawled into the lee of
the cab to get out of the freezing wind. He pulled his earflaps low and pushed his
chin into the collar of his coat. Someone rapped on the window but Tub would not
turn around.
He and Frank waited outside while Kenny went into the farmhouse to ask permission.
The house was old and paint was curling off the sides. The smoke streamed
westward off the top of the chimney, fanning away into a thin gray plume. Above the
ridge of the hills another ridge of blue clouds was rising.
“You’ve got a short memory,” Tub said.
“What?” Frank said. He had been staring off.
“I used to stick up for you.”
“Okay, so you used to stick up for me. What’s eating you?”
“You shouldn’t have just left me back there like that.”
“You’re a grown-up, Tub. You can take care of yourself. Anyway, if you think you’re
the only person with problems I can tell you that you’re not.”
“Is there something bothering you, Frank?”
Frank kicked at a branch poking out of the snow. “Never mind,” he said.
“What did Kenny mean about the babysitter?”
“Kenny talks too much,” Frank said. “You just mind your own business.”
Kenny came out of the farmhouse and gave the thumbs-up and they began walking
back toward the woods. As they passed the barn a large black hound with a grizzled
snout ran out and barked at them. Every time he barked he slid backwards a bit, like
a cannon recoiling. Kenny got down on all fours and snarled and barked back at him,
and the dog slunk away into the barn, looking over his shoulder and peeing a little as
he went.
“That’s an old-timer,” Frank said. “A real graybeard. Fifteen years if he’s a day.”
“Too old,” Kenny said.
Past the barn they cut off through the field.s The land was unfenced and the crust
was freezing up thick and they made good time. They kept to the edge of the field
until they picked up the tracks again and followed them into the woods, farther and
farther back toward the hills. The trees started to blur wiht the shadows and the
wind rose and needled their faces with the crystals it swept off the glaze. Finally they
lost the tracks.
Kenny swore and threw down his hat. “This is the worst day of hunting I ever had,
bar none.” He picked up his hat and brushed off the snow. “This will be the first
season since I was fifteen I haven’t got my deer.”
“It isn’t the deer,” Frank said. “It’s the hunting. There are all these forces out here
and you just have to go with them.”
“You go with them,” Kenny said. “I came out here to get me a deer, no listen to a
bunch of hippie bullshit. And if it hadn’t been for dimples here I would have, too.”
“That’s enough,” Frank said.
“And you–you’re so busy thinking about that little jailbait of yours you wouldn’t
know a deer if you saw one.”
“Drop dead,” Frank said, and turned away.
Kenny and Tub followed him back across the fields. When they were coming up to
the barn Kenny stopped and pointed. “I hate that post,” he said. He raised his rifle
and fired. It sounded like a dry branch cracking. The post splintered along its right
side, up toward the top. “There,” Kenny said. “It’s dead.”
“Knock it off,” Frank said, walking ahead.
Kenny looked at Tub. He smiled. “I hate that tree,” he said, and fired again. Tub
hurried to catch up with Frank. He started to speak but just then the dog ran out of
the barn and barked at them. “Easy, boy,” Frank said.
“I hate that dog.” Kenny was behind them.
“That’s enough,” Frank said. “You put that gun down.”
Kenny fired. The bullet went in between the dog’s eyes. He sank right down into the
snow, his legs splayed out on each side, his yellow eyes open and staring. Except for
the blood he looked like a small bearskin rug. The blood ran down the dog’s muzzle
into the snow.
They all looked at the dog lying there.
“What did he ever do to you?” Tub asked. “He was just barking.”
Kenny turned to Tub. “I hate you.”
Tub shot from the waist. Kenny jerked backward against the fence and buckled to his
knees. He folded his hands across his stomach. “Look,” he said. His hands were
covered with blood. In the dusk his blood was more blue than red. It seemed to
below to the shadows. It didn’t seem out of place. Kenny eased himself onto his
back. He sighed several times, deeply. “You shot me,” he said.
“I had to,” Tub said. He knelt beside Kenny. “Oh God,” he said. “Frank. Frank.”
Frank hadn’t moved since Kenny killed the dog.
“Frank!” Tub shouted.
“I was just kidding around,” Kenny said. “It was a joke. Oh!” he said, and arched his
back suddenly. “Oh!” he said again, and dug his heels into the snow and pushed
himself along on his head for several feet. Then he stopped and lay there, rocking
back and forth on his heels and head like a wrestler doing warm- up exercises.
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.
“He made me,” Tub said.
“No no no,” Kenny said.
Tub was weeping from the eyes and nostrils. His whole face was wet. Frank closed
his eyes, then looked down at Kenny again. “Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere,” Kenny said, “just everywhere.”
“Oh God,” Tub said.
“I mean where did it go in?” Frank said.
“Here.” Kenny pointed at the wound in his stomach. It was welling slowly with blood.
“You’re lucky,” Frank said. “It’s on the left side. It missed your appendix. If it had hit
your appendix you’d really be in the soup.” He turned and threw up onto the snow,
holding his sides as if to keep warm.
“Are you all right?” Tub said.
“There’s some aspirin in the truck,” Kenny said.
“I’m all right,” Frank said.
“We’d better call an ambulance,” Tub said.
“Jesus,” Frank said. “What are we going to say?”
“Exactly what happened,” Tub said. “He was going to shoot me but I shot him first.”
“No sir!” Kenny said. “I wasn’t either!”
Frank patted Kenny on the arm. “Easy does it, partner.” He stood. “Let’s go.”
Tub picked up Kenny’s rifle as they walked down toward the farmhouse. “No sense
leaving this around,” He said. “Kenny might get ideas.”
“I can tell you one thing,” frank said. “You’ve really done it this time. This definitely
takes the cake.”
They had to knock on the door twice before it was opened by a thin man with lank
hair. The room behind him was filled with smoke. He squinted at them. “You get
anything?” he asked.
“No,” Frank said.
“I knew you wouldn’t. That’s what I told the other fellow.”
“We’ve had an accident.”
The man looked past Frank and tub into the gloom. “Shoot your friend, did you?”
Frank nodded.
“I did,” Tub said.
“I suppose you want to use the phone.”
“If it’s okay.”
The man in the door looked behind him, then stepped back. Frank and Tub followed
him into the house. There was a woman sitting by the stove in the middle of the
room. The stove was smoking badly. She looked up and then down again at the child
asleep in her lap. Her face was white and damp; strands of hair were pasted across
her forehead. Tub warmed his hands over the stove while Frank went into the
kitchen to call. The man who had let them in stood at the window, his hands in his
pockets.
“My friend shot your dog,” Tub said.
The man nodded without turning around. “I should have done it myself. I just
couldn’t.” “He loved that dog so much,” the woman said. The child squirmed and she
rocked it.
“You asked him to?” Tub said. “You asked him to shoot your dog?”
“He was old and sick. Couldn’t chew his food any more. I would have done it myself
but I don’t have a gun.”
“You couldn’t have anyway,” the woman said. “Never in a million years.”
The man shrugged.
Frank came out of the kitchen. “We’ll have to take him ourselves. The nearest
hospital is fifty miles from here and all their ambulances are out anyway.”
The woman knew a shortcut but the directions were complicated and Tub had to
write them down. The man told them where they could find some boards to carry
Kenny on. He didn’t have a flashlight but he said he would leave the porch light on.
It was dark outside. The clouds were low and heavy-looking and the wind blew in
shrill gusts. There was a screen loose on the house and it banged slowly and then
quickly as the wind rose again. They could hear it all the way to the barn. Frank went
for the boards while Tub looked for Kenny, who was not where they had left him. Tub
found him farther up the drive, lying on stomach. “You okay?” Tub said.
“It hurts.”
“Frank says it missed your appendix.”
“I already had my appendix out.”
“All right,” Frank said, coming up to them. “We’ll have you in a nice warm bed before
you can say Jack Robinson.” He put the two boards on Kenny’s right side.
“Just as long as I don’t have one of those male nurses,” Kenny said.
“Ha ha,” Frank said. “That’s the spirit. Get ready, set, _over you go_” and he rolled
Kenny onto the boards. Kenny screamed and kicked his legs in the air. When he
quieted down Frank and Tub lifted the boards and carried him down the drive. Tub
had the back end, and with the snow blowing in his face he had trouble with his
footing. Also he was tired and the man inside had forgotten to turn the porch light
on. Just past the house Tub slipped and threw out his hands to catch himself. The
boards fell and Kenny tumbled out and rolled to the bottom of the drive, yelling all
the way. He came to rest against the right front wheel of the truck.”
“You fat moron,” Frank said. “You aren’t good for diddly.”
Tub grabbed Frank by the collar and back him hard up against the fence. Frank tried
to pull his hands away but Tub shook him and snapped his head back and forth and
finally Frank gave up.
“What do you know about fat,” Tub said. “What do you know about glands.” As he
spoke he kept shaking Frank. “What do you know about me.”
“All right,” Frank said.
“No more,” Tub said.
“All right.”
“No more talking to me like that. No more watching. No more laughing.”
“Okay, Tub. I promise.”
Tub let go of Frank and leaned his forehead against the fence. His arms hung
straight at his sides.
“I’m sorry, Tub.” Frank touched him on the shoulder. “I’ll be down at the truck.”
Tub stood by the fence for a while and then got the rifles off the porch. Frank had
rolled Kenny back onto the boards and they lifted him into the bed of the truck.
Frank spread the seat blankets over him. “Warm enough?” he asked.
Kenny nodded.
“Okay. Now how does reverse work on this thing?”
“All the way to the left and up.” Kenny sat up as Frank started forward to the cab.
“Frank!”
“What?”
“If it sticks don’t force it.
The truck started right away. “One thing,” Frank said, “you’ve got to hand it to the
Japanese. A very ancient, very spiritual culture and they can still make a hell of a
truck.” He glanced over at Tub. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you felt that way,
honest to God I didn’t. You should have said something.”
“I did.”
“When? Name one time.”
“A couple of hours ago.”
“I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”
“That’s true, Frank,” Tub said. “You don’t pay attention very much.”
“Tub,” Frank said. “what happened back there, I should have been more
sympathetic. I realize that. You were going through a lot. I just want you to know it
wasn’t your fault. He was asking for it.”
“You think so?”
“Absolutely. It was him or you. I would have done the same thing in your shoes, no
question.”
The wind was blowing into their faces. The snow was a moving white wall in front of
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