The Yearling

This lengthy novel, published in 1938, earned the author the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1939. Though set in the 1870s in the aftermath of the Civil War, it describes experiences of loss similar to that which shaped the generation of the First World War and the Wall Street Crash. Moreover, its description of loss helped to prepare its young readers for the death of brothers and friends during the Second World War.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (born 8 August 1896) had moved to northern Florida with her husband in 1928. Although an outsider, she quickly made a deep connection with the local environment and it inspired her to write short stories and novels immersed in the locality and seasoned with the Southern dialect. Her first novel, South Moon Under, published in 1933, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

The Yearling concentrates on the humble existence of small farmer, Ezra Baxter, son of a preacher, and his wife, Ora. Ezra was nicknamed Penny because of his size. They had many children:
“The family had come. Ora Baxter was plainly built for child-bearing. But it had seemed as though his seed were as puny as himself. The babies were frail and almost as fast as they came they sickened and died. Penny had buried them one by one in a cleared place among the black-jack oaks, where the poor loose soil made the digging easier... He had carved little wooden tombstones for all.”
“There had been a hiatus in the births. Then, when the loneliness of the place had begun to frighten him a little, and his wife was almost past the age of bearing, Jody Baxter was born and thrived.”

The Baxter parents bring up a single child as a treasure: he is the survivor. The author tells the parallel story of another survivor: a fawn, whose mother has been killed by Penny in an emergency, is adopted by Jody. Jody goes hunting with his father not as a pastime but as a necessity both for obtaining meat and hides to trade and as a means of subduing the threat that predators pose to the livestock on the Baxter farm. Jody tells his father “I hate things dyin.” His father explains the reality he must come to understand:
“Nothin's spared, son, if that be ary comfort to you... Well, hit's a stone wall nobody's yit clumb over. You kin kick it and crack your head agin it and holler but nobody'll listen and nobody'll answer.”

Jody is stunned by the death of his young friend and neighbour, Fodder-wing. He observed the boy’s body on the death bed:
“Fodder-wing's silence was intolerable. Now he understood. This was death.  Death was a silence that gave back no answer. Fodder-wing would never speak to him again.”

When the two, boy and deer, come of age, these two yearlings are forced to confront the harsh reality of survival on the Florida scrub. If Jody insists that his friendly deer remains his pet, he will continue to destroy the crops that his parents depend on for their very existence. If he loses the deer, he loses the only companion he has other than his parents. In the end, his parents force Jody to lose the deer. His father tries to console him:
“I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to git their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.”