I've never fully understood The Hunt (one of the stories from Fables and Reflections), but it remains on of my favorite parts of the series, partially because of the intrigue and mysteriousness. My two questions follow:

*What was the big deal about the grandfather commenting at the end on how that woman who'd beaten him to the wolf was his wife?

*Why did he reject the princess or whatever she was after he'd found her?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the story is originally told as something from the old country - the protagonist is someone familiar to the grandfather, but there's no indication that it's actually him until that final moment.

The princess was too human for him to tolerate. At least, that's what I've always thought.

quote:

Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the story is originally told as something from the old country - the protagonist is someone familiar to the grandfather, but there's no indication that it's actually him until that final moment.

The princess was too human for him to tolerate. At least, that's what I've always thought.

It was the grandfather. At first he tells it as if it was just a myth, but on the last page, he reveals that he was the protagonist.

That's pretty much what I said and is the significance of his line about the girl's grandmother beating him to the kill - that's the big reveal.

the "big deal" about his final comment is that referring to the woman who killed the deer as his wife taught his granddaughter who she really was—learning about your heritage and your family history is often helpful that way for teenagers/young adults. you can't have a future if you don't have a past, in my opinion.

quote:

Originally posted by Dweller in Darkness:
The princess was too human for him to tolerate. At least, that's what I've always thought.

I always thought it was a classic case of what you think you want not really being what you want at all and of image and reality separating. sure, she looked pretty, and he had this idealized concept of her in his head, but the person she actually was and the person he thought she was weren't the same thing, and he realized it when he saw her in the flesh.

in a paradoxical way, his wife was the more "human" of the two—she was real and alive and part of the solid, physical world, not a lifesize copy of a picture on a necklace.

Thanks everybody for clearing things up for me. Also: I apologize Dweller in Darkness, I must not have read your post right.

you gotta remember that F&R is a compilation of 3 dirrefent bits. You've got the special, about orpheus, and two collections of shorts, one of which is all the historical stories linked by the names of months -ramadan, thermidor, etc and the distant mirror stories, where the story teller becomes the story.

so thematically that's the significance.

The story, meant to teach about family heritage, is an event that happened to the grandfather. The significance of the wolf-woman being his wife was to teach that sometimes the best come from the unexpected, among similar themes.

I think that he rejected the princess when he finally found her because she wasn't wild enough--she couldn't fit in with his wolf nature.