Tobias Wolff
To begin, the resemblances between this story and South Park are so numerous that they cannot go unmentioned. First, both contain all-male groups of friends. Both occur in snow-covered settings. Both have a main character named Kenny who is wounded in an unexpected manner and presumably dies. The two are strikingly similar.
However, on a literary note, the actions of the characters help to characterize them all respectively as well as contribute to the action of the short story. For example, when "Frank and Kenny worked one bank [of the creek] and Tub worked the other, moving upstream," the tendency of the other two to exclude or gang up on Tub is illustrated (189). He is the one who is forced to walk alone while his friends have one another with whom to walk. Another instance that also has this same theme is at the beginning of the story when Tub is picked up by the other two men who were already together. Frank is also characterized by his actions; he likes to constantly excuse his and others' actions. "Kenny was just messing around," "Kenny talks too much," and "I guess I wasn't paying attention" all demonstrate this inability to live up to the consequences of actions (187, 191, 196). The combination of Frank's and Tub's actions and dialogue help to indirectly characterize their friend, Kenny. They talk about him as though he is choleric, irresponsible, and gossip-prone. All of the actions and conversations in the end help the reader to figure out the characters on a more in-depth level than if each was presented individually.
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