The story Devil Deer written by Rudolfo Anaya is related to the event
of hunting deer. In the story, the young hunter Crbuz shoots a buck inside the
fence around the Los Alamos National Laboratory and finds it is terribly
deformed. Now, read the below article where we have discussed the characters,
summary and important question answer of the story ‘Devil Deer’.
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Short Summary of Devil Deer
This story, "Devil Deer,"
is related to the event of hunting deer. Frank Waters wrote a story about a man
who killed a deer, which inspired Rudolfo Anaya to write the story "Devil
Deer." In the story, the young hunter Cruz shoots a buck inside the fence
around the Los Alamos National Laboratory and finds it to be terribly deformed.
He brings the carcass home, but the old men of his town take it away to burn
it. A new legend would grow about the man who "had gone into the
forbidding land where the forest glowed at night." Cruz killed something
that had become an embodiment of man’s evil, and one does not easily recover
from such an encounter. In this story, nature as a subject and nature as an
object collide the moment the talk of hunting begins. The fact is, we as human
beings consume a piece of nature one way or another in order to sustain our
lives.
Characters in Devil Deer
|
Cruz: the main character (hunter) |
|
Joe: Cruz’s friend, whose leg was broken
before the hunt. |
|
Cruz’s wife: The lady who
wanted Cruz to bring home a big buck (the male of some horned animals,
especially deer) 4. Deer: The deer was considered a devil deer. It had a
strange appearance. It had a deformed body. It also had bent legs, human-like
hairs on its antlers, white stone-like eyes, and was blind. |
Setting of Devil Deer
The story takes place in a small
hunting village in the Jemez Mountains in autumn, where Cruz and his wife live.
Then the story goes to a black ridge (a long, narrow hilltop) in Los Alamos
Laboratory.
Theme of Devil Deer
In this story, nature as subject and
nature as object collide the moment the talk of hunting begins. The fact is, we
human beings consume a piece of nature one way or another to sustain our lives.
Summary of Devil Deer in one sentence
This story shows us that a young
hunter named Cruz kills a deer inside the fence of the national laboratory and
finds it deformed and when he brings it to the village, they burn it, saying
that it is a devil deer.
Important points to remember
- Pueblo is the Spanish term for village.
- Buck is the word for male deer.
- Devil Deer was written by Rudolfo Anaya. Rudolfo was an American novelist and educator. He was inspired by a story written by Frank Waters in which a man kills a deer.
Complete summary of Devil Deer
There was a pueblo at the peak of
Jemez Mountain. People in the pueblo used to gather and talk about the day
together. At night, men used to polish their rifles and tell hunting stories.
The deer season was coming. Neighbors
gathered and started to talk about hunting deer. It was a season when deer
roamed the forest and hunters had the opportunity to hunt them. The men started
making plans to hunt the deer together, while the wives hoped to have a big
buck this time.
Cruz, who was with his wife, was
hearing the laughter of his neighbors. Cruz also wanted to feed his family deer
meat. The couple dreamed of getting a big deer this season. The stories told by
the old people about the deer made Cruz more impatient. Everyone knew that the
deer population was decreasing and that it would be hard for people to hunt
them down this season. Cruz made a plan to go to Black Ridge in the jungle with
his friend Joe. Los Alamos Laboratory built a fence around half of the ridge.
Hunting was hard there, as people believed
that electricity was supplied to prevent people from entering the fence. Cruz
and Joe planned for a month to hunt. But just before the season started, Joe
broke his leg. Cruz was left alone. Joe warned Cruz not to go to the ridge
alone and instead asked his friend to hunt the deer with his cousins. Cruz
wanted to go to the ridge, where only a few hunters went. He packed his
belongings. He took the tiffin prepared by his wife to eat on the road and
drove his truck high up to the ridge.
He slept in the truck that night, not
wanting to build a camp. He took out a bear doll, talked to it for a while, and
slept. In his dream, he saw the bear standing like a man. It was deformed
because one leg was bent and it didn’t have another leg. It was approaching Cruz
with saliva in its mouth, telling him to leave the area. Cruz woke up and
thought about the meaning of the dream. It was dark outside; slowly, the sun
rose, and he could feel the deer season beginning.
Early in the morning, he ate a
sandwich from the tiffin made by his wife and began to search for a buck. He
searched in the thick forest, waiting for a movement in the bushes. He walked a
distance and felt a movement. When he turned back, he saw the antlers moving in
the bushes. He drew his rifle, but the deer was 50 yards away, and he could not
get a perfect shot. Cruz quietly walked along the fence. He expected the deer
to run away at any time, but instead, it started to follow him. The deer was
following the movements of Cruz. Now he was ready with his rifle, but the deer
vanished.
He searched for a place to sit. Cruz
sat on a log and looked into the forest. After a while, he could see the clear
image of the buck staring at him from the forest. Without thinking, he fired
his gun. He missed the shot. All the birds started flying from the tree, but
the buck didn’t move.
Cruz moved slowly away from the buck
as it moved deeper into the forest. Cruz started following it. He didn’t want
to give up. While searching, he came near the fence, where he saw a hole. He
could see how the deer could get around the fence now. He planned to park his
truck near the fence so that he could easily take the deer after killing it. He
drove his truck near the fence. He began to search for the deer inside the
fence. After a while, he saw the deer heading towards the truck. He followed
it, and finally he could see the buck clearly in front of him.
But when he watched it clearly, he
could see hairs on the antlers. Not giving it much attention, in the name of
God, he shot the bullet three times. The buck fell to its knees. Cruz hurried
to cut its throat but stopped. He was shocked, and he vomited all the
sandwiches he had eaten in the morning. The blood spread all over the place,
the hair on the antlers was like human hair, and the eyes were like two white
stones. The buck was blind.
He didn’t feel happy about killing
the buck. He wanted the old men to see the deer. He dragged it down to the
truck. The skin of the deer stuck to the bushes. He was very scared. He thought
that the research in the laboratory and the experiments were the cause of the
deformed deer. He wondered if the warning in his dream was related to it while
driving.
In his dream, the deformed bear
resembled the dear. He cursed himself for not paying attention to the dream. It
was dark. He was sweating. After a while, he saw lighted windows on the hill.
He reached his home and parked his truck. The neighbors were happy to see the
truck. Cruz sat on the truck, sad and quiet. Everyone gathered.
The neighbors were shocked, as they
had never seen anything like that. Cruz told them that he killed it inside the
fence. An old man told Joe to take Cruz inside the house, and they would get
rid of the deer. Cruz, in a frightened mood, drank a cup of coffee while the
other hand took the deer away to burn it. This type of case was never seen by
the old men in the past, and it became a perfect story for the next generation
as someone killed a Devil Deer.
Devil Deer [Important question answer]
Describe the setting of the story
The story writer Rudolfo Anaya uses
the valley named Pueblo and the forest near it, especially the place called
Black Ridge, some of which was fenced in by Los Alamos National Laboratory, as
the setting for his story. The majority of the crucial moments in this story occur
between the evening and the morning, so it can be said that it occurred at
night.
Rudolfo first describes the people's
occupation as hunters, which has been followed since immemorial time, and then
later on focuses his story towards the hunter named Cruz, who can be seen as
the main character in the story, and his encounter while hunting in the forest
near the Los Alamos Laboratory.
What is the theme of the story? Write in a sentence.
The story's theme is that nature as a
subject and nature as an object collide the moment hunting is mentioned, as if
to show that we, as humans, consume a piece of nature in some way in order to
sustain our lives.
What were the dreams and planning that made the pueblo happy?
Why did the young men want the first day of deer season to come
quickly?
The young men wanted the first day of
deer season to come quickly because they were growing eager to get up in the
forest and bay a buck rather than hear the stories of the old men.
Why was the deer population growing scarce?
The deer population was growing
scarce because of the hunters who hunted them every year during deer season.
Describe Black Ridge, the place where Cruz and Joe were going
hunting.
The Black Ridge, where Cruz and Joe
were going for hunting, was covered by dense, thick, and dark pine trees. Part
of the ridge was fenced in by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The ridge lay
silent and ominous on the side of the mountain.
What relationship do you find between the bear in Cruz’s dream and
the buck in reality?
The dream that Cruz dreamed of might
have been a warning to Cruz about the coming encounter. And as he was carrying
out his plan, he came across a huge buck that resembled the bear he saw in his
dream, with a deformed body; his (the buck's) legs were bent and gnarled, and
it was as terrifying as the bear in his dream.
Explain why Cruz felt no joy in taking the life of the buck. How
does the story portray his ambiguous emotions?
The buck that Cruz killed was not an
ordinary buck, but a deformed, ugly, and terrifying animal that may have been
just like an embodiment of the devil, which is why he felt no celebration in
taking the life of the buck as the situation went completely out of his
expectations in a bad way.
At first, as the deer season came,
Cruz felt eager, ambitious, and determined emotions dueling with him as he had
plans of getting a big buck to offer to his people, but later on, due to the
encounter with the buck/deer which looked like an embodiment of the devil as
mentioned in the above paragraph, his strong emotions started to waver, and he
started to get confused, as shown later in the story, which shows or portrays
Cruz's ambiguous emotions.
How was the deer that Cruz brought home? What was Joe’s response
to it?
The deer that Cruz brought home had
big, dark antlers with hairs like humans on the bottom of them; it was blind,
had twisted and gnarled legs, and was really terrifying to look at.
Joe shone his light on the buck to
examine it, which was followed by an unsettling sight that made him recoil.
Is the title of the story suitable? How does the dead deer become
an embodiment of man’s evil, and does one not easily recover from such an
encounter?
Yes, the title of the story is
perfectly suitable.
Other people, who are not shown in
the story but can be identified as human races, are engaging in a variety of
activities that are causing nature to change, such as the Los Alamos Laboratory
from the story, where various bio-chemicals, bio-weapons, accelerators,
plutonium, and atom smashers are being created and affecting the
environment.Specifically, the deer killed by Cruz had an abnormal featural and
structural body, which could have been caused by the Los Alamos Laboratory's
effects.As we can see the human race (man) going beyond limits or against
nature (doing evil things), resulting in the terrifying deformed situation of
the deer as a result, we can say that the dead deer does become an embodiment
of man's evil.
Cruz had never faced, seen, experienced, or encountered anything as a hunter; this was the first time he encountered such a terrifying situation that he may never forget in his life. This shows that one does not easily recover from such an encounter.
Thank you sir 🙏
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