Hunters In The Snow Isolation

“Hunters in the Snow” deals with the motif of alienation, or isolation. Tub and Frank both experience isolation from others, reinforced by the secrets they are keeping. Kenny and Frank rush ahead of Tub while hunting, and almost leave without him. Tub has to run to catch up with them, and pulls himself into the truck before it drives away. Indignant, he says,”’I used to stick up for you.’ ‘Okay, so you used to stick up for me. So what?’ ‘You shouldn’t have just left me back there like that.’” (90) Tub is continually being excluded from his friends, who seem to have teamed up against him. Kenny and Frank mock and tease him, leaving him isolated from his so-called friends. Later, Tub stands up to Frank: “‘What do you know about fat,’ Tub said.

Tub thus feels isolated and left out, feeling that his “friends” do not really know him. After stopping at a diner and after Frank admitting that he wants to leave his wife for a fifteen-year old girl, he says, “‘The way I look at it, Tub, no man is an island. You’ve got to trust someone.’” (98) Here, Frank is acknowledging the problems that he has, and, in his admission to Tub is acknowledging that he needs the warmth of bonding as well. He acknowledges that no one can survive isolated and alone, and he has to trust someone, if he is to survive in such a cold world. Frank’s admission spurs Tub’s admission as well, admitting that his obesity is due to overeating, not his glands. He says that, “‘Nobody knows, That’s the worst of it, Frank. Not the being fat, I never got any big kick out of being thin, but the lying. Having to lead a double life like a spy or a hit man… Always feeling like people are watching you, trying to catch you at something. Never able to just be yourself.’” (98) Tub admits that lying about his obesity has led him to live a sort of double life, where he must continually blame his obesity on his glands instead of his overeating. This shows that Tub is ashamed of his overeating, and feels that he must lie about it. His alienation of others is partly from his leading a double life, as he is ashamed of keeping such a secret. He cannot be his real self around others, and is afraid of being himself around others,

As Paul goes from Carnegie Hall to the Schenley to Cordelia Street, “Paul never went up Cordelia Street without a shudder of loathing… He approached it tonight with the nerveless sense of defeat, the hopeless feeling of sinking back forever into ugliness and commonness that he always had when he came home.” (238) Paul does not even feel like he belongs at home. He is totally disgusted with his life, which increases the alienation and isolation that he feels, as he feels that he is the only one who does not belong in this world that he absolutely loathes. The nearer he approaches, the more “absolutely unequal Paul felt to the sight of it all,” hinting that Paul does not even really consider himself to be a part of this world, and feels that he deserves more in life, a totally different life that suits his desires better, instead of the current life he is living. To him, “It was at the theater and at Carnegie Hall that Paul really lived; the rest was but a sleep and a forgetting. This was Paul’s fairy tale, and it had for him all the allurement of a secret love.” (241) He is so distant from his reality that he considers his fantasies his “life,” while reality is a “sleep and a forgetting.” His flat denial of his reality as the real world shows how desperate Paul is for permanent escape into his fantasies from reality. He cannot