Male Friendship According to Tobias Wolff Essay Example

Introduction

One of the most important pillars of society is relationships between the individual in the community. Different people have different kinds of relationships with each other. One of the most common types of connection between people is friendship. The kind of association differs from person to person, from age to age and from gender to gender. This difference in the type of bond between men and women is evident in the shore story hunters in the snow.

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Hunters in the snow is a 1981 short story by Tobias Wolff. The story revolves around three friends who go for a hunting trip in the snow. Kenny is the leader of the group and is hard and brutal in his comments. He does not care who he hurts with his statements. Tub is the fat one in the group. Because of his weight, he is always the target of ridicule from his peers, especially from Kenny. The last member of the group is Frank. Frank is the quietest and easy going of the three. He does not have much of a say in the group and generally goes along with what the other two decide. Entirely, Tobias Wolff strives to show the peculiar manner in which male friends correlate in an attempt to express their care and trust in others. It is wholly built on harmful and exclusion premises (Vigil 150).

The story begins when the three decide to go to the woods to hunt some deer. Kenny picks the other two up from the sidewalk where they have been waiting for Kenny for over an hour. The narrator states that has Tub not run, Kenny would have driven his truck over Tub just for the fun of it, when they arrive at the hunting site, Tub scouts one side of the river while the other two scout the opposite side of deer tracks. The snow was deep and Tub being fat, struggled to get through the snow. In his struggling, he forgot about what he was supposed to do and focused on how to keep moving and not get stuck. When the other two cross over to Tub's side, they find deer tracks but Tub has walked all over the roads and did not tell them. Realizing this, the two start ridiculing him on his weight and how stupid he is. They follow the deer tracks until they come to a fence. They go and get their truck and begin to ask for permission to hunt for deer. They hunt but end up with nothing in the end. As they walk past the house, Kenny starts declaring his hatred for things around him and starts shooting them (Wolff 18). First, he hates the fencepost and kills it, and he then claims that he hates the farmer's dog and pulls it in the head. He then states that he hates Tub but this time Tub beats him to draw his gun and shoots Kenny in the stomach.

While Tub and Frank tried calling emergency services it dawned on him that Kenny was only joking and he would not have pulled the trigger. There was no ambulance and the two placed Kenny on the pickup and drive off to the hospital. As they are driving the cold becomes unbearable and Tub and Frank walk into a tavern to warm themselves leaving the wounded Kenny all alone in the cold. When they get back, Tub realizes that he had left the directions to the hospital at a table in the tavern. Frank tells him not to bother going back for them as he could remember the route to the hospital (Wolff 29). After some time they feel cold again and decide to stop at a roadhouse. After returning, Frank tells Kenny to be optimistic as they were going to the hospital. After some time of driving the two realize they were going the opposite way to the hospital.

This story shows a lot of ways in which the friendships between men and women are different. The most evident is when Kenny has been shot and the other two have to take him to hospital. Considering the fact that Kenny had been shot, the two would have at least have had some sympathy and rushed him to the hospital and not make stopovers. However, the two of them stop twice because they were feeling cold and needed to get warm before continuing with their journey. They even open up about their secrets about their life while their friend is dying from both the cold and being shot. This is one of the proofs of how the friendship between men and women vary. Women would have been terrified of leaving their friend who has been shot in a cold car all alone. The case of the directions is also another difference between the two genders. If your friend is as important to you as you say, why leave the directions to the hospital on a tavern's table. Even worse is the way Kenny decides to guess the way to the hospital only to find out after some time that they had been going the wrong way. This lack of compassion shows the lack of value the two placed in the life of their friend.

Correlation of Male Friendship

Notably, based on these three friends, it is evident that male friendship is held in hand to hand by betrayal and exclusion instead of goodwill and kindness. The hunting trip, which represents the epic itself ultimately postulates that male's friendship normally entails harming others instead of showing affection. For instance, men tend to connect in activities such as trying to kill something for the sake of fun. However, if their subject of kill is absent, they start turning on each other.

Significantly, the alliance between Frank and Kenny demonstrates that male friendship features disloyalty and ridicule. It is worth noting that the prior and the latter alliance is against the will of Tub. For instance, the pair form a close bonding and starts branding Tub rude names. Moreover, they also laugh at him by walking in front of him because he is overweight. Leaving him behind makes him experience a lot of struggle as he makes his own ways through the deep snow and fences in the woodland. However, it is substantial to understand that the ringleader of this behavior associates with Kenny despite the fact that it does not originate from him (Wolff 19). The incident where the bond between Kenny and Frank breaks and the latter with Tub forms a gang up on the prior resonates the fact that Kenny is not the leader of the behavior. When the two forms up gang up against Kenny, it becomes clear that the dynamics of the two friends become crueler rather than kinder. For instance, the alliance between Frank and Tub abandons a freeze and seriously wound Kenny behind the pickup truck. The main reason behind the two wounding Kenny is chatting and eating his pancakes.

In male friendship, their efforts of making genuine approaches to closeness make them vulnerable to abuse as well. The friendship between the three boys in the book clearly explains the character of men in their relationship where the moment the characters engages in honesty overtures to the relationship makes them a subject of abuse. A good example of this behavior can be seen when Frank opens his heart to Kenny before the begging of the story regarding a fifteen-year-old babysitter, Roxanne Brewer, who he happened to be fond of (Wolff 23). However, instead of offering a piece of advice or guiding his friend when it comes to the affair of the heart, Kenny realized that the honest story paved the way for his potential leadership in the group. As a result, he threatened to tell Tub and thus turning the whole story around into an opportunity of exercising among all the three. This is evidence of how male friendship is rarely built on others' impactful feelings or preferences (Vigil 152). Rather, male friends are more interested in gaining personal advantages amid ridicule that grants them superiority over others.

Male friendships are founded on reality and the true face of emotional and behavioral stand each treats others with (Caldwell and Letitia 727). For instance, prior to the incident where Kenny is hot in the stomach, Tub was always victimized with ruthless comments that clearly point out his unprecedented weight. This is indicative of the harsh truth between male friends, which is often shared to an extent of exciting and revealing the bare truth behind everything. As a matter of fact, it is not true to claim that male friends who tend to always express others' disadvantages could not be realistically mindful of others whenever an hour of need arises. According to Tobias Wolff despite that Tub, Kenny, and Franks has a correlative friendship that was founded on a ruthless way of frankly expressing the bonding relationship and co-existence (14). Notably, reality plays a major role in male friendships and it can be tailored toward fun and peace while co-existing. Ironically, it is a male friendship way of showing a feeling of friendship without traces of kindness or favors for others.

Friendship among Women

On the other hand, women friendship is mostly built on tailored fairness and politeness amid internal rejection pressure. The art of friendship among women is best explained by Ferrante in the story 'My brilliant friend'. Typically, the author strives to portray the difference in women's friendship by focusing on the critical relationship between Lila and Elena who grew up together in a Naples' suburban neighborhood in the 1950s. Ferrante's novel begins upon the news that Lila (Raffaello Carullo) had vanished in an attempt to fulfill an initially expressed will. As a result, Elena, her childhood pal resolves to tell her story (2). This explains the flashback of the story to single-handedly reveal the story behind their friendship, which dates back to the 1950s period. Elena and Lila had met at the age of six while in elementary school. Contrarily, the two girls came from different but closely related backgrounds whereby Elena was sired by a City Hall porter and had difficulties while coping up with her mother and the school environment. Her friend Lila came from a relatively poor background indicated by her illiterate mother but she attained remarkable milestones through self-taught reading to become an academic giant in school.

Amid meeting, Lila and Elena's friendship began at the age of seven when Lila threw her pal's doll into Don Achille's basement. Don was one of the most famous and feared gangsters within their locality. In retaliation, Elena later threw Lila's doll toward a similar fate. Over time, the girls agreed to approach the dreaded man despite his disreputable reputation across the entire area (Ferrante 9). They had to approach Don and ask for their dolls. In response, Don claimed to have no clue regarding whatever had happened to their dolls. However, he faithfully offered some money to the girls. This shows how women often tend to stick together and remorsefully amend broken relationships on account of anger or vengeance.

Despite that the girls' friendship grew stronger over time and experience, they were faced with ruthless scenarios that led to a spring up of undesirable characters for friends. For instance, jealousy became one3 of the most prominent issue between Elena and Lila. More often they could argue and break their relationship on account of who was prettier or deemed more successful than the other. However, Ferrante illustrates one strong characteristic of Elena and Lila's friendship as support and kindness, which were inevitably tailored to drive the two friends toward shared experiences of love and cherish for one another. They were strong enough to support each other throughout their difficulties through prioritizing forgiveness, remorseful speeches, and faithfully reached out attempts to make each other happy and reliable on their best friends for help, guidance, and limitless support during needy hours. For instance, Elena's parents were fair enough to let her pursue her education. Unlike Lila's parents who preferably attached more value to work than the daughter's education refused to allow her to pursue her education. Ironically, the difference between their family-based lives hardly contributed to friendship dif...