“Hunters in the Snow” by Tobias Wolff, is a short story about three acquaintances, Tub, Frank, and Kenny, and certain choices that they make due to their set of morals and judgment. A possibly fatal accident brings Tub and Frank closer together, and between them, some of their darkest secrets are revealed. Each character in Tobias Wolff’s short story is desperate in one way or another to gain the others’ acceptance. Tobias Wolff’s “Hunters in the Snow” conveys the way that people attempt to alter their own morality and the moralities of others in order to gain acceptance into society and to justify their own selfish desires.
The characters’ motivation is the desire for acceptance and own selfish wants. The story begins by introducing one of…show more content… Frank asks Tub, “Tub, have you ever been really in love?”(89). Frank then goes on, arguing, almost against his own conscience rather than Tub’s; arguing that he was truly in love with the girl, Roxanne Brewer, and that his true love justified all. He also compared his hopeful relationship to the ones in cultures from the seventeenth century when men would marry girls usually ten years younger than them. As Frank successfully begins to convince Tub that his desire is not bad, actually not immoral, Tub reveals a fault of his own. Tub tells Frank that he does not actually have a gland problem, but that he had been lying to everyone all along, and just had a very bad eating habit. Frank then manipulates Tub’s problem to suck him in to believing and accepting Frank’s awful desire even more by offering Tub ten plates of pancakes. By doing so, Tub gives in, and figuratively turns to damp clay, which Frank is able to mold and change. Frank encourages Tub’s over-eating, and in doing so, removes Tub’s morality, his knowledge of right from wrong. Frank and Tub think that they have created their own new set of morals; however, they could not be more