The Yearling
Spring of Life ( Original Title: The Yearling ) is a 1938 published novel of the U.S. American author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (* 1896, † 1953). The novel was awarded the 1939 Pulitzer Prize and was widely circulated. He first appeared in 1939 in German language of Schroeder Publishing. The translation of Maria Honeit was used for all further published in Rowohlt publishing expenses. Until 1979, only the Random House brought out a total circulation of 173,000 pieces.
Content
The main character is the 13 -year-old Jody, the lonely lives close to nature with his parents Ezra " Penny " Baxter and Ora Baxter in the 1870s, but on a farm in the vast forests of the U.S. state of Florida. Penny Baxter directs his son's life seemingly unintentional, but with superior wisdom.
The novel covers only one year, from spring to spring. During this time, Jody matures from a child to a young man approach. He finds an abandoned fawn he calls Flag and put it on. Flag is his only and best friend, with whom he shares all the joys and sufferings due to the solitary position of the family farm. Jody felt an intimate, unique friendship with the deer. Life on the farm is characterized by hard work that just throws off so much that it is enough for a meager living for the small family. But the deer flag begins his natural urge to follow and it causes serious damage to the hallway laboriously cultivated farmland on which endanger the survival of the family. Since flag can not suspend and the way back to the farm always finds that parents have to make a decision, which is equally necessary as desperate. Jody Baxter must ultimately the yearling flag shoot. This leads to the break between son and father.
Topic
The novel portrays at first glance a youth outside of cities in the U.S., which is characterized by privation and hard work, but also of great freedom and closeness to nature. But he is also also an accurate representation of the lives of those people who opened up as free settlers the country by making the wilderness under cultivation. The Fawn, which dominates as a motif the overall story, is a symbol of youth and freedom par excellence; as Jody must eventually kill the grown- deer, he must leave his youth behind him to take over at the site of his old and sick father's responsibility for the farm. In the last sentence of the novel evokes once more as a vision the picture of the boys with Fawn, to clarify that with growing up Jody's freedom of the beginning and the youth is not generally entered into for him, but to the end.
Awards and film
In 1939, the work of the Pulitzer Prize for Novels (Novel ), which was awarded from 1918 to 1947; from 1948 this price was replaced by the Pulitzer Prize for Novels ( Fiction ).
1946 appeared the same American feature film starring Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman ( German: The Yearling ). In addition, an anime series was produced in 1983, which deals with the contents of the book and is titled " Kojika Monogatari " in the original. In Germany, the series was broadcast all my friends under the name.