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Parallelism Between Mero and the Half-Skinned Steer
“The Half-Skinned Steer,” a story in Annie Proulx’s Close Range, follows an elderly man’s journey back to his childhood home. In this story the notion that hard work will provide an escape from a harsh life and death is rejected through the symbolism of the steer and the main character’s attempt at running away from it.
Mero grows up in a failing Wyoming ranch with his brother, father, and father’s girlfriend, by whom is he both repulsed and aroused. A story she tells one day never leaves Mero’s memory, even now at the age of eighty-three. ... One day Tin Head knocks out a steer but does not bother to make sure that it is dead. He skins it only halfway and cuts off its tongue before leaving for supper and comes back to find that the now mute steer was not dead and had mustered up the strength to escape the finishing slices of Tin Head’s knife.
And all that distance Tin Head can see the raw meat of the head and the shoulder muscles and the empty mouth without no tongue open wide and its red eyes glaring at him, pure teetotal hate like arrows coming at him, and he knows he is done for and all of his kids and their kids is done for…
Upon seeing the steer on the horizon, Tin Head realizes the graveness of his mistake and knows that he and his whole family is from then on cursed.
Approximate Word count = 892
Approximate Pages = 3.6
(250 words per page double spaced)
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