Varieties of the Fantastic in Fiction

It seems important to understand whether or not it is worth it to sacrifice yourself for someone else.

Samantha Hunt’s “Beast” follows the fantasies and guilt the narrator experiences as a result of partaking in an animalistic, one-night affair with a man she met at a bar. It is after this affair happened that the narrator begins to transform into a deer at night, with the final pages revealing that her husband, as well, turns into a deer.

It is hard to understand what Hunt is attempting to reveal here, and, as you have pointed out to me, sometimes there doesn’t have to be a point. When I first read this back at the beginning of the semester, I was afraid to write a post offering little to no explanation of what is happening. Re-reading it again a few months later (eek!), I feel like I might have more insight to offer than before.

At the beginning of this story, the narrator is reading an article in the newspaper about a brother supporting his sister by sending her to college on his dime.

On page eighteen of the National Report there’s an article, “Good Guy Gets the Chicks.” It’s the story of a brother who works at a chicken rendering plant by day and at a security firm by night in order to send his sister to college. He sells his plasma to make ends meet.

When I first read this, I thought this was sweet to include but didn’t offer much substance, other than a glimpse into the narrator’s nighttime routine. The narrator recounts a couple of pages later a disturbing story about her neighbor Pete caring for a baby deer, keeping her as a pet.

When we were young, there was a man named Pete who lived around here. Pete kept a wild deer as a pet. Everyone said that Pete had done things with the deer, though I don’t see how they could know that. It was a small town. Rumors spread. Soon people started saying even more. They said that Pete had done things with his own daughter also, and there might have been some truth to that. She had been taken away by the state. People didn’t know why but they guessed why. The spookiest part of the whole story, and the reason people suspected him, is because Pete named the deer after his daughter, Jennifer. He’d call the deer, “JENNIFER. JENNIFER.” You could hear him at night. “JENNIFER. JENNIFER.” Slowly. And the deer would come when called, as if it were a dog and not a wild creature. She’d come to him.

Once again, I didn’t understand the correlation between the metamorphosis the narrator experiences, and so, I moved on.

The final encounter we read about is when Enrich (the man who the narrator had the affair with) called her, detailing the explicit things he wanted to do to her.

Erich called me at work yesterday to tell me what he wanted to do to me. He said he wanted to see me. He said he wanted to eat my roast beef pussy. One thing very general, one thing very specific. It made it difficult for me to breathe hearing those very specific words. No one had ever said that combination of things to me before. I was shocked by how powerful those words were. I started to think that maybe he actually wanted to kill me. Thus, the reference to beef. Thus, I’d fuck you to death.

For me, “Beast” is about how women are used for male pleasure, thus using the metamorphosis of a deer; feminine, gentle and innocent, to convey this wild freedom the narrator yearns for.