The Yearling Essays - English-language Films, The Yearling

The Yearling In The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the author portrays the experiences of life in the backwoods of Florida in the late 1800s. Here life is simple, but survival is difficult. The roaming wildlife and lush landscape provide many adventures for a young boy, such as Jody Baxter. Along with the adventures, there are responsibilities. The novel illustrates how Jodys sense of responsibility helps him to resolve his conflict between meeting his own need to raise the fawn, and meeting his familys need for survival. Raising his pet fawn contributed largely to Jodys enjoyable childhood. Flag, as Jodys pet fawn was named, tagged along with him everywhere even innocently interfering with his daily chores, such as chopping wood. Flag was very curious and pried into everything Jody did. Flag had indirectly become his pet, since he had been told by his mother that he could not raise the fawn as a pet because there was only enough food to feed the family. Flag became dependent on Jody, just as a pet would. Jody loved this too. It made him feel loved and needed, as Flag showed Jody his appreciation by always following him and brushing against him affectionately. As the only surviving child of his parents, Jody was lonely, both physically and mentally. His mother had become distant after losing six previous children and was not very fun. His father was too busy to play with him too as he was too involved in maintaining the familys survival. Flag had become his best friend after he lost his dear friend Fodder-wing Forrester to death. He loved having Flag around and some of their moments together became some of the most enjoyable and memorable moments in his childhood. Survival in the backwoods of Florida is difficult, and Jody must work with his parents for this purpose. There is constant conflict in the tough times they are experiencing, and everything has to be protected that his theirs. When their pigs come up missing, clearly stolen, Jody and his father Penny go looking for them only for his father to be bitten by a rattlesnake. When he kills a deer to use its liver to draw out the poison, Jody sees first hand the elements, unfair as they are, of life and death, and making sure that survival is understood. Jody is assigned chores, wood chopping, milking of the cows and whatever else that is asked of him. Even in his secrecy of taking acre of Flag he feeds him whatever he can often sacrificing his own food. But it becomes too much as Flag grows, needing more and more food. Survival in the backwoods of Florida was tough for the Baxters, and the other families of the area, food had to be hunted, crops had to be raised, and work on their proper ty went from morning until the sun set. It was all lessons for Jody as a boy of what he would be dealing with as a man. He had to grasp this too, though it was difficult. Jodys sense of responsibility helps him to deal with the fawns interference with the familys survival. When Jodys father becomes ill and he has to step up and do more, helping the familys survival being the most important thing, he then begins to see what his father and mother had always seen which was how Flags presence was interfering with the familys needs. When Flag destroys the tobacco crop and eats up the corn crop, he clearly understands that they cannot afford to keep and feed the fawn. His heart is broken over this. His father orders him to take Flag into the woods and shoot him. The lesson in this experience is traumatic but assists in his growth as a man. Ultimately he grows to understand that the most important issue is his family, and Flag, not realizing it at all, is dangerously destroying this survival. In the end, Jodys sense of responsibility helps him to resolve his conflict between meeting his own need and meeting his familys need. Jody starts in the story as the only surviving child of the Baxters. He is a child with a childs idea of