Devil Deer

                                                CRITICAL APPRECIATION

Devil Deer is a short story written by Rudolfo Anaya, an American novelist, educator and author. This story was published in Arellano Journal in 1992. The story shows the culture, tradition and way of living of the people of pueblo. People of village are obliged to earn living by connecting them with the nature. Every year they go for hunting animals from the forest, especially deers. They unknowingly kill many wild animals, as a result the population of deer is decreasing every year. Every next time they have to go for deep in the forest for hunting. Cruz and Joe are friends in the story. They also make plan for hunting together but later Cruz himself does so because of the leg injury of Joe. Cruz shoots a big buck inside the “Los Alamos Laboratory” fence but doesn’t feel happy because he notices that the deer was deformed by the impure air and chemicals of laboratory. He feels that he is also going to be attacked by an unknown/incurable disease.

The incident killing of deer and Cruz’s discontentment denotes that we human beings vandalize nature and natural world for survival or for personal benefit so we break the balance in ecosystem and put the human life in threat just as Cruz did in the story.