Right of Passage (Doe Season)

In the beginning of the story, Andy references the woods as, "always the same," and the ocean as, "huge and empty, yet always moving." Doesn't this sound familiar to you? I can remember when I was making the transition into adulthood and how eager I was about it. It seemed like I had been so childish for so long and it was time to face the wide open world as an adult. I didn't see these comparisons back then, much like Andy didn't see the hunting in all of it' s aspects. I thought that the world of being an adult was great in that it was like the ocean, wild and roaring and exciting! Now I look back and long for the safety of being a child, where everything was always the same. These two sentences alone can account for the theme as a whole in this story. They are an incredibly well written way to explore the excitement along with the fear and possible disappointment of becoming an adult. Andy didn't get what she had bargained for out of this hunting trip, which is something that most of us can say at some point or other in out lives. Life can get scary, and we all face things that we are not quite ready to face, but that shapes us into the people that we are today, and I believe that hunting trip did exactly that for Andy. She realized at the end of the story that she was not the person she thought she was and after that she would never be the same again.