Hunters in the Snow

In Tobias Wolff's Hunters in the Snow it was hard to pick one character who fully deserved sympathy. Each character had many flaws, yet each seemed to have elements of sympathy or pity. Personally, I felt the most pity for Tub. He seemed to get the short end of the stick throughout the story until right towards the end. He seemed to be left out, the butt of Frank and Kenny's jokes, and the one they left behind. "Tub was having 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" (Wolff,189). On top of not helping Tub through the forest when they could recognize that he was struggling, they made fun of his weight and his endeavor to lose weight. However, my view of him shifted when he shot Kenny and they left him in the truck.

I also felt bits of sympathy for Frank. It is common to feel for the man that is going through a divorce. But then again, I felt the least amount of pity for this man because of what he professed to Tub. "this so-called babaysitter, this so-called fifteen year old has more in her little finger than most of us have in our entire bodies" (Wolff, 198). I do not have any sympathy for any man who leaves his wife for his children's baby sitter who is a minor of only fifteen years old.

I felt no sympathy for Kenny throughout the entire first three quarters of the short story. He seemed to be a jerk to Tub all the time and seemed to have the least amount of patience with him. Then, when he shot the dog, I lost all sympathy if I had any at all. By the end though, I realized that he had been treated very poorly by Tub and Frank. He had been accidentally shot but shot none the less. He was wounded and needed a hospital, yet the two other men didn't seem in any hurry to take him to get help. Not only that, but he was stuck laying in the bed of a truck during blizzard like conditions.