Doe Season: Andy's Epiphany
Uploaded by Sonic4Riot on Nov 02, 1999
The process of finding out who one is can be very turbulent and confusing. Through growing up one goes through so many different changes in terms of one's personality and deciding who they are and what they want to be. The little girl in David Kaplan's "Doe Season" goes through one of these changes, as do many other adolescents confused about who they are, and finds out that there are some aspects of a person's identity that cannot be changed no matter how hard he/she tries.
Andy is a nine-year-old girl who doesn't want to grow up to be a woman. When she talks of the sea and how she remembers her mother loving it and how much she hated it is a clue that she prefers to be a "boy". The sea is symbolic of womanhood and the forest is symbolic of manhood. Andy expresses extreme distaste for the sea and a curiosity of the woods. She never really admits to liking the woods but the way she refers to it is always as if she's fascinated by it, but she doesn't know much about it. Therefore, she must go hunting as a test to see if she belongs. To contrast how she feels about the sea and the forest, she refers to the forest as deep and immense, while she refers to the sea as huge and empty. Andy sees the man's world as a wonderful, fascinating world while she sees the woman's world as meaningless and empty.
Andy sees the changes into a woman on the horizon and she is scared by these changes because they are very confusing to her. This is why she try's to do man-type things such as hunting. To further confuse her, her father supports her striving to be part of the man's world. He refers to her as Andy even though her real name is Andrea and takes her with him to do manly things.
The reader first gets a hint of the fact that Andy is unable to be a member of the male fraternity when she expresses her disliking of Mac. Mac is representational of the typical boy in this story. Andy thinks that Mac is stupid and is annoyed by all of the pranks and teasing he submits her to. This is an extension of her femininity, even though she doesn't quite grasp that fact. The next instance where...