"Doe Season" by David Michael Kaplan

"Doe Season" by David Michael Kaplan carries the classic theme of a child entering adulthood. Andy, the protagonist is only nine years old, but understands that she will be entering adulthood soon. I see the doe hunt symbolizing a rite of passage for Andy. This is her first hunt, and she is innocently excited. She has watched her father hunt every year, and knows the enjoyment it brings him, and wants to be a part of it. "Please let us get a deer, she prayed."(462)This plead expresses her innocence as a child. Later, when she sees the deer and is pressured by the hunting group to "shoot", she is having second thoughts. She wants the deer to run before she has to shoot it. It doesn't and Andy shoots it, which catapults her out of the innocence she has only known. Now she has killed an animal, which she struggles with. "What have I done? Andy thought."(465)This moment in time has forever changed her. She will even change her name, showing her passage through childhood into adulthood. "And now they were all calling to her-Charlie Spoon and Mac and her father-crying Andy,Andy (but that wasn't her name, she would no longer be called that);yet louder than any of them was the wind blowing through the treetops, like the ocean where her mother floated in green water, also calling come in, come in, while all around her roared the mocking of the terrible, now inevitable, sea."(467) The sea symbolizing her inevitable advancement into adulthood.