The narrator of Munro’s short story is an 11-year-old girl coming to terms with the expectations of adulthood and womanhood that await her. At the story’s beginning, she is responsible and committed to helping her father with his fox farming business. She sees the foxes’ death as an important part of her family’s survival, and she is not afraid to watch her father and the hired worker, Henry Bailey, shoot a horse for its meat. Her mother longs for a daughter who acts more like a girl, helping her at home and listening to her more glamorous stories.

Shooting the horse, Mack, inspires a change in the narrator. Although she does not articulate any fear or shame, she becomes more adult in the process, hoping that she can take care of her brother to preserve his innocence. While the narrator is reluctant to grow up and assume womanhood, still singing the songs that she and Laird sang to keep them safe through their childish fear of the night, she starts to change slowly. She is concerned with her appearance and the appearance of the home, thinking more actively of the traditional role of a woman that she spurned months earlier. This role feels like a trap, and when the narrator attempts to release Flora, a horse set for killing, it is also her last real attempt to free herself from the trapped position that seems to be her only option, even in the stories she tells herself.