What is the theme of The Yearling?

The primary theme of The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is growing up in hostile and sometimes violent surroundings. Jody Baxter has a pet deer from which he is inseparable. The deer Flag grows up and starts eating the family vegetable garden. This is wholly unacceptable because their surroundings make food from the garden an irreplaceable necessity. Jody runs away when Flag has to be shot to preserve the family food source.

Jody's father, who has plenty of hardship and suffering of his own, isn't sympathetic in the sense that he encourages Jody to feel sorrow and grieve for Flag, but he is sympathetic in the sense that, because he lives in the same harsh environment and has suffered terribly himself, he teaches Jody that hardships have to be accepted without permitting them to cripple you. He tells Jody it's part of learning to be a man. The theme can be controversial because of its emphasis on killing and negative emotions as being needed to become a man.

What is the overall theme of The Yearling?

The 1939 winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Marjorie Kinnan Rawling's The Yearling tells the story of young Jody Baxter and his family in the scrub land of post-Civil War North Central Florida. The primary themes of the novel focus on Jody's rise from a boy into young manhood as he raises a pet fawn that grows into maturity alongside him. During his change from boyhood, he encounters many trials:

• He takes part in "the violent world of the hunt"
• His best friend dies
• He takes over his father's work load after Penny Baxter is bitten by a rattlesnake and, later, injured
• He weathers a terrible storm that destroys many of the family's crops
• He feels betrayed by his parents
• He is forced to destroy the fawn--the thing he loves most
• And he survives several days alone on the river

It is a story of maturation that deals with loss and loneliness.

(I have taught The Yearling many times over the years, and I'm proud to say that Marjorie formerly taught at my alma mater, the University of Florida.)