Hunters In The Snow

Hunters in the Snow by Tobias Wolff follows the hunting expenditures of three "friends" who think friendship is about insulting one another, being rash and crude, and even shooting each other? Initially, the short story was to me like reading about some unclassy hick folk who get their laughs making childlike and immature jokes. However, the story does get more meaningful and the characters do reveal themselves rather in a more respectable light with their more honorable actions and treatment of each other as the book goes on. Both Frank and Tub both go through what I think to be a slow but sure development and turnaround, proving to be dynamic characters. Having before teased each other rudely, now they share more mature feelings and talk more intelligently, the sensitive topic of love is actually conversed seriously when Frank asks: " 'Tub, have you ever been really in love...I mean really in love...with your whole being,' "(Wolff,197)? They feel comfortable enough with one another to talk like adults and share their innermost feelings, what true friends do and what I had thought Frank and Tub were incapable of. They even consider themselves real friends out loud: " 'Frank, when you've got a friend it means you've always got someone on your side, no matter what. That's the way I feel about it, anyway,' "(Wolff,198). Frank responds: ' "You don't know how good it feels to hear you say that,' "(Wolff,199). This furthers the idea that wherever they used to be along the line of friendship, now the relationship is more secure and the realization of how cherished it is is made known to both Tub and Frank. Over the course of just a short read, both characters seemed to have evolved immensely into a more loving friend to another, their personalities still silly but seemingly much more developed and changed due to their time spent together really sharing and talking with each other.