On The Antler

            On The Antler, by Annie Proulx is an excellent short story that deals with the issue of revenge, clearly through the story of the two main characters. This story, I feel, falls into the situation that there can be no new stories anymore, only different treatments of the same broad themes, which Annie Proulx put to me very well through her use of language, characterisation and her clever use of the unexpected ending, of which I will explore fully with reference to the text.
             On The Antler is a story centred around two main characters: Hawkheel who is a quieter character with a love of books and Bill Strong who is a more nasty character who gets off on other people misery and only thinks about making money. The story follows their "tit-for-tat" relationship which then fuels into a relationship of hatred breeding revenge.
             In my opinion characterisation played a large part in this story and ultimately the resulting theme. The writer chose to start the story with a quite extensive build-up of the stories two main characters, Hawkheel and Strong, which I felt then set the picture for the rest of the story. She firstly detailed Hawkheel starting off when he was a "half-wild boy" where she described him "smashing" branches giving the impression that he was quite a troublesome boy. But as he got older she went on to describe how he had a fascination, almost obsession, of which he was starting to base his life around, with books. This ultimately his main source of revenge on Strong as he had the knowledge of books Strong did not. She described the way he read the with a beautiful simile saying that the words were "gliding under his eyes like a river coursing over polished stones", this I feel emphasised how he enjoyed reading so much, but more importantly it made me feel that Hawkheel is a fairly upstanding character. The writer also describes Hawkheel as a person who enjoys the outdoors and has his own private, personal, special "secret places" which once again, to me, shows that Hawkheel is a fairly descent character.