"Doe Season" (Answer to #3)

Andy finds reassurance in the woods that are so huge, yet so comfortable to her. “They were the same woods that lay behind her house, and they stretch…for miles and miles…the thought made her feel good’ (Kaplan 456). This could represent her childhood because she is comfortable where she stands (physically, emotionally, and spiritually). As Andy and the guys walk through the woods she starts to compare the trees blowing like the sound of the ocean. She remembers how the ocean frightened her because it was “huge and empty, yet always moving…everything lay hidden” (459). The transition she makes from the woods she knows well to the undiscovered ocean is like the transition she makes from childhood to adulthood, on her hunting trip. Before Andrea went hunting, she obviously hadn’t thought about what she was getting herself into. Once she was pressured to actually kill a deer and see how she made it suffer, the disillusioning and painful process of growing up was revealed to her. This realization is what made her transition towards the adult world—the world that is like an ocean. Everything is moving, yet everything is hidden until one experiences a reality check. She now knows what it’s like to kill something; something she hadn’t thoroughly thought about before.