One's A Heifer Analysis

In the story “One’s A Heifer” by Sinclair Ross, the boy strongly represents the quote ‘People tend to see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear’, altering the truth of the events that take place in the story. On the search for his families’ missing cows, he comes across a man who has potentially stolen them. The boy’s perception of the man he meets is altered by a few aspects. First of all, the boy had been travelling all day, and in a hope of answers, it is possible that he wills himself to believe that his cows are in this man’s possession, “And then at last I finally saw them. It was nearly dusk,” (Sinclair 193). This quote demonstrates just how long he has been looking for these cows. It is almost dark and there has been

He feels the need to help his family, when the other man of the house is unable to do the task of finding the cows. The crops have also been poor in their region, “We too… [have] poor crops lately. That [is] why it is so important that I find the [cows], (192). Without these cows it will be difficult for his family to survive, so any small sign, like possibly seeing the cows on the horizon is good enough for the boy to pursue looking for them even closer. The boy also has some hallucinogenic dreams, where he hears animals talking to him, but he also sees the man act ‘crazy’ while playing chess. All night the man talked about this female that used to hang around and occasionally play chess together. In the dream, the boy sees the man “reaching for a weapon, as if his invisible partner [is] an enemy,” (199). When the man reaches for a weapon, it symbolizes abusing his partner, who was typically the female he kept talking about during dinner. This dream represents the boy’s thoughts, where he believes that the man abused/killed the female. If he can prove that this man is a bad man, that he has done something bad, then he can prove to his family that this man stole the cows. This is his subconscious ‘seeing what it wants to see and hear what it wants to hear’. The boy constantly ‘saw what he wanted to see and hear what he wanted to hear’, thus altering his perception of what is