Fear the Yearling

What were they thinking?

Here we are, mere months out of the horror of the war with the Axis powers, and Hwood decides we need a lesson in the fact that "life is durn hard, Pa"?!?

I know the whole thing is merely a metaphor for growing up gay in the rural south, and hence the need to shoot your "dear" before it starts eating the tubers in the garden, but pleeease.

I mean, metaphor aside, what you end up with is a story about country livin' folks who don't know ass from claw about the consequences of domestication. The deer was the only intelligent creature on all of Baxter's Island (and if it's BAXTER's island, why do they have neighbors on that island - the subtly named "Forresters" - who are older....?) and they shot it.

What next? Is someone going to adapt Steinbeck's bloody awful "Red Pony?"

"Gah"