The Yearling
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Cover of original 1938 edition
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| Author | Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Young adult novel |
| Publisher | Charles Scribner's Sons |
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Publication date
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1938 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 416 (Mass Market Paperback) |
| Preceded by | South Moon Under |
| Followed by | Cross Creek |
The Yearling is the 1938 novel written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. It was published in March 1938.[1] It was the main selection of the Book of the Month Club in April 1938. It was the number one best seller for twenty-three consecutive weeks in 1938.[2] As well as being the best-selling novel in America in 1938, it was the seventh-best in 1939. It sold over 250,000 copies in 1938.[3] It has been translated into Spanish, Chinese, French, Japanese, German, Italian, Russian and twenty-two other languages.[4][5] It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1939.
Rawlings's editor was Maxwell Perkins, who also worked with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and other literary luminaries. She had submitted several projects to Perkins for his review, and he rejected them all. He instructed her to write about what she knew from her own life, and the result of her taking his advice was The Yearling.
Contents
Plot
Young Jody Baxter lives with his parents, Ora and Ezra "Penny" Baxter, in the animal-filled central Florida backwoods in the 1870s. His parents had six other children prior to Jody, but they died in infancy which makes it difficult for Ma Baxter to bond with him. Jody loves the outdoors and loves his family. He has wanted a pet for as long as he can remember, yet his mother, Ora, says they only have enough food to feed themselves.
A subplot involves the hunt for an old bear named Slewfoot that randomly attacks the Baxter livestock. Later the Baxters and Forresters get in a fight about the bear and continue to fight about nearly anything. The Forresters steal the Baxters' pigs and while Penny and Jody are out searching for their stolen pigs, Penny is bitten in the arm by a rattlesnake. Penny shoots a doe to use its liver to draw out the snake's venom. Penny recovers, but the doe leaves behind a fawn.
Jody adopts the fawn, whom Fodder-Wing names "Flag", and it becomes his constant companion. The story revolves around the life of Jody as he grows to adolescence along with the fawn. The plot also centers on the conflicts of the young boy as he struggles with strained relationships, hunger, death (of his childhood companion, Fodder-Wing Forrester, due to sickness), and the capriciousness of nature through a catastrophic flood. Throughout, the Baxter family is in contrast to their uncouth neighbors, the Forresters, and the Baxters' more refined relatives in the village of Volusia. Jody experiences tender moments with his family, his fawn, and their neighbors and relatives. Along with his father, he comes face to face with the rough life of a farmer and hunter.
As Jody takes his final steps into maturity, he is forced to make a desperate choice between his pet, Flag, and his family. The parents realize that the now-adult Flag is endangering their very survival, as he persists in eating the corn crop on which the family is relying for their food the next winter. Jody's father orders him to take Flag into the woods and shoot him, but Jody cannot bring himself to do it. When his mother shoots the deer and wounds him, Jody is then forced to shoot Flag in the neck himself, killing the yearling. In anger at his mother, Jody runs away, only to come face to face with the true meaning of hunger, loneliness, and fear. After a failed attempt to run away in a broken-down canoe, he is picked up by a mail ship and dropped off in Volusia. In the end, Jody comes of age, returning to assume his role as the emerging caregiver to his family and their land.
Characters
- Ezra "Penny" Baxter: Father of Jody. Raised by a stern minister who allowed no leisure. Treats his son Jody generously because of his own childhood. Formerly in the Army. Nicknamed "Penny" by Lem Forrester because of his diminutive size.
- Ora Baxter: Mother of Jody. Introduced in the book on page 20 as "Ora." Penny calls her "Ory". Often referred to as "Ma" or "Ma Baxter".
- Jody Baxter: The son of Ora and Penny Baxter.
- Flag: Jody's pet fawn.
- The Forresters: (Pa and Ma Forrester, Buck, Mill-Wheel, Arch, Lem, Gabby, Pack, Fodder-wing) A family that lives near the Baxters. There is a conflict between the two families.
- Fodder-wing Forrester: Jody's best friend. He is crippled and thought to be rather peculiar, but has a great fondness for animals.
- Julia: Hound dog owned by the Baxters
- Rip: Bull dog owned by the Baxters
- Perk: Feist dog owned by the Baxters
Film, TV, theatrical or musical adaptations
The novel was adapted into a film in 1946, starring Gregory Peck as Penny Baxter and Jane Wyman as Ora Baxter. Both were nominated for Oscars for their performances.
A Broadway musical adaption with music by Michael Leonard and lyrics by Herbert Martin was produced by The Fantasticks' producer Lore Noto in 1965. The book was written for the stage by Lore Noto and Herbert Martin. David Wayne and Delores Wilson played Ezra and Ora Baxter, and David Hartman, later of Good Morning America, was Oliver Hutto. The show itself only played three performances.
Barbra Streisand recorded four songs from the show: "I'm All Smiles", "The Kind of Man A Woman Needs", "Why Did I Choose You?", and the title song "My Pa".
A Japanese animated version (titled Kojika Monogatari) was released in 1983.
A 1994 television adaptation starred Peter Strauss as Ezra Baxter, Jean Smart as Ora Baxter, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as Buck.
A 2003 poem, "Woodcliff Lake" by James Reiss, deals with The Yearling. The poem is from Reiss's book Riff on Six: New and Selected Poems.
A May 2012 episode of New Girl mistakenly referred to the scene where Jody attempts to shoo Flag as a scene from the Jack London novel White Fang. The expression "white fanging (someone)" was used in the episode to describe the act of reluctantly rejecting someone held very dear.
A 2012 song entitled "The Ballad of Jody Baxter", by singer/songwriter Andrew Peterson, deals with themes from The Yearling. The song is from his album Light for the Lost Boy.
Notes
Near Rawlings' home in Cross Creek, Florida is now a restaurant named after this book. The restaurant serves Southern food such as catfish and alligator tail, and regularly features live folk music played by local musicians.
References
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Bellman, Samuel. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1974.
- Bigelow, Gordon. Frontier Eden: The Literary Career of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Gainesville, FL: University Presses of Florida, 1966.
- Lee, Charles. The Hidden Public; the Story of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958.
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- Silverthorne, Elizabeth. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. New York: The Overlook Press, 1988.
- Tarr, Rodger L. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: a descriptive bibliography, Pittsburgh series in bibliography. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996.
- Tarr, Rodger L., editor. Max & Marjorie: The Correspondence between Maxwell E. Perkins and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1999.
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