Counting Miracles

Images of and allusions to the white deer repeat throughout the novel. The characters first hear that “[t]here’s a big white deer in the Uwharrie forest” on a news report (52). Because reporters only have “a blurry picture of it,” no one is sure that “there even [is] such a thing as a white deer” (52). Characters like Jasper Johnson, however, see the deer as “the ghost of something from another life” (52). Jasper first heard about white deer in the region from his father’s stories when he was a boy. Learning about the white deer sightings in the narrative present therefore awakens the mystery and wonder of his childhood and affords him a sense of excitement he hasn’t experienced since his family’s tragic deaths. The white deer therefore acts as a symbol of hope and redemption. Jasper remembers his father saying that some cultures’ mythologies cast the deer as a figure from another world—a belief which underscores the white deer’s enigmatic nature.

Furthermore, the deer’s uncanny color underscores its symbolic resonance. The deer is “an albino,” meaning that scientifically it’s white because it “doesn’t have the usual pigment in its coat or nose” (53).