Varieties of the Fantastic in Fiction

With Samantha Hunt’s  “Beast” being started off with the main character reading the newspaper at night, which shows that she is trying to stay up late for some reason, as most people read the newspaper in the morning before they leave for work, while they are eating their breakfast.  While she is lying in bed that night, after finishing the paper, she notices there is a tick crawling on her. Her husband had been talking about how small it is as it couldn’t see it and stated “deer ticks are very small” (51). This was the first sign of the woman being around a deer, as if she hadn’t been around a deer, she wouldn’t have a tick that was only found on a deer.  Just a few days prior to her finding the tick on her body, they had gotten a letter in the mail that was explaining “Lyme Tick Awareness,” which shows that they must live in an area that is possibly heavily populated by deer. The people in power seem to want people in the area to know what they can get from getting close to a deer. “When he graduated from high school he froze, like a deer in the headlights, distracted by every leaf on the tree” (51), shows that her brother was contemplating what he wanted to do in life and even if he still wanted life, as soon after he had committed suicide out in the woods.  This also shows that he could have had the same condition she had, as a deer will freeze what it’s doing when something comes along and catches it off guard. Once the husband had turned off the light and fell asleep, then she had began her transformation into a deer. Samantha Hunt talks on page 55 that the deer begins to clean the husband like a mother deer would do to its babies. She also didn’t want to wake the husband, which a mother deer also wouldn’t do to her babies. The wife is afraid to tell her husband, as she is afraid that he will be mad that she was keeping this secret from him, which he was in the end. She was like anyone who had something to tell someone, where she would keep trying to find the “right time” and continued to push it off until another day.  The husband was in such denial once his wife’s secret came out that he began to want proof. Later that night, her husband had also turned into a deer. This makes the story take a whole different turn, as it just happened the night his wife shared her secret. By both members of the couple turning into a deer at night, this shows why they are having ticks crawling on them and fearing that they have possible lyme disease. “Beast” by Samantha Hunt makes one wonder if when you are bitten by a tick with the lyme disease from a deer if this is what will happen to you.