The Yearling Book Report

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Jody’s sense of responsibility helps him to deal with the fawn’s interference with his family’s survival. At the time when Penny turns out to be sick and Jody needs to venture up and accomplish more, helping the family's survival, being an essential thing, he then starts to see what Penny and his mother had dependably observed – Flag is subject to causing destruction which puts the Baxter’s in danger. Jody needs to make a decision on his own about what to do with Flag when he keeps eating almost all of the seedlings of the Baxter’s corn crop and destroys the tobacco crop. Jody knows that corn is the most important crop on the farm, so to calm Ora, who wants Flag killed; Jody works very hard to assemble a high fence that surrounds the corn crop to potentially keep Flag out. Jody starts feeding Flag his own food, willing to sacrifice and deal with any hunger just to feed the helpless fawn. Jody shows that he understands the responsibility, and he is willing to work to lessen the damage. Flag jumps the fence though without any hesitation and destroys another round of corn plantings. The mother has had enough and sadly she ends up shooting Flag were it leaves Jody in a situation where he ends up having to put his poor closest companion out of its misery. In the long run, Jody learns that responsibility is a strong part of being human.

In the end, Jody’s sense of responsibility helps him to resolve his conflict between meeting his own need and meeting his family’s need. The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, was both a heartbreaking and entertaining novel that told a story of a boy, Jody Baxter, and the way he matured from a boy to an adult. The way that the story follows a year in the life of this boy and in particular the relationship that he develops with his pet, captures what it is to grow up in such a difficult setting.