Hunters in the Snow

“Hunters in the Snow”

• Genre: Fiction; realistic short story   
• Originally Published: 1981
• Reading Level/Interest: Grades 9–12; college/adult
• Structure/Length: Approx. 10 pages; approx. 30 minutes on audio
• Protagonist and Central Conflict: Three men—Tub, Kenny, and Frank—meet to go hunting in a rural area outside Spokane, Washington. Kenny and Frank mock Tub for being overweight and leave him behind a few times as they search for deer tracks. After a farmer grants them permission to hunt on his property, Kenny shoots the farmer’s dog and then turns his gun on Tub, who shoots Kenny in apparent self-defense. Frank and Tub make multiple stops while driving Kenny to the hospital and are headed in the opposite direction when the story closes.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Gun violence (one character and a dog are shot); language

Tobias Wolff, Author

• Bio: Born in 1945 in Birmingham, Alabama; moved multiple times with his mother before she remarried, then settled in a small town in western Washington state; struggled with delinquency and truancy as a youth; had a troubled relationship with his stepfather that he wrote about in the memoir This Boy’s Life, winner of The Whiting Writers’ Award; later attended a private high school, then served in Vietnam before completing his studies at Oxford University in England; started his fiction writing career while working as a reporter for The Washington Post; body of unpublished fiction earned Stanford University’s Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing
• Other Works: In the Garden of the North American Martyrs (1981); The Barracks Thief (1984); This Boy’s Life (1989); Old School (2004)
• Awards: St. Lawrence Award for Fiction (for short story collection In the Garden of the North American Martyrs, in which “Hunters in the Snow” appears)                   

CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:

• Toxic Friendships
• Narcissism and Neglect
• Man Versus Nature

STUDY OBJECTIVES: In accomplishing the components of this Unit, students will:

• Develop an understanding of Dirty Realism as a subgenre of Realism that informs the story’s central conflict and message.
• Analyze the deeper meaning of the text through prompts and activities that address the text’s themes of Toxic Friendships, Narcissism and Neglect, and Man Versus Nature.
• Design, construct, and present collages that represent themes, literary devices, and characters based on evidence from the text.
• Analyze and explore literary techniques and elements to draw conclusions in structured essay responses regarding the characters’ friendship dynamics, moral dilemmas, key themes, and other topics.