Gender Unit 1

Hunters in the Snow
Tobias Wolff

In Hunters in the Snow, Wolff uses the literary element of conflict as he goes about describing the friendship between Kenny, Tub, and Frank. He makes note of their crude humor toward each other which is an indication that their friendship is rather light-hearted. At the beginning of the story, I thought that these men were only friends with each other so that the men would have friends to hunt with. However, as the story continued, conflict began to rise among the friends. Kenny becomes rather upset when the men are hunting and he angrily begins to shoot at things.  Whenever he would come across something he did not like, he would shoot it. Some of these including posts, trees, and an old dog. However, Tub knew that Kenny needed to be stopped. "Tub shot from the waist. Kenny jerked backward against the fence and buckled to his knees"(Wolff, 193). Even though this was a drastic way to go about stopping Kenny's rampage, Tub knew that it needed to done in order to spare the lives of other living creatures that did not deserve to die. Wolff showed that conflict proved to test the friendship of these men.