The Importance Of Relationships In Tobias Wolff's Hunters In The Snow

In life, one of the most precious things human beings have is their relationships with those that they spend a majority of their time with. Most of the time, people are able to understand how much these relationships enrich and improve their lives, and how boring and melancholy their lives would be without them. Although, sometimes people can have the tendency to take these relationships for granted because of their inclination to to be selfish or to hold on to their pride. Therefore, there are many “friendships” that are filled with lies and competition which cause these said relationships to become corrupt. In his short story “Hunters in the Snow”, Tobias Wolff uses the relationships between the characters Kenny, Tub, and Frank in a sequence of events to exemplify that sometimes people’s own pride and selfishness

At the age of only five years old, his parents “split up,” (Goobler 2) causing Tobias and his brother Geoffrey to be separated between the parents: Tobias with their mother (later along with his miserable stepfather) and Geoffrey with their father. This event was quite drastic for Tobias, and in hopes to escape his hard life, he “fabricated” (Woodruff 1) an application to a boarding school away from his family. This fake application was the first of many major lies Wolff committed in his life. His tendency to stretch the truth is noticeable in his works of literature, including “Hunters in the Snow.” For example, in the story mentioned there is a character named Tub who has an eating problem. He eats a large amount of food all during one period of time, but he lies about eating the food and even tries to convince his friends and family that he is on a “diet.” (168) This is only one example of the lies told in the story, but because Wolff wrote the character lying about something so small, it is evidence Wolff has the tendency to lie in his own