The driver is a seventeen-year-old taking his father's Fairlane wagon out in the middle of the night. After accidentally striking an animal, he makes the panicked and irrational decision to load the injured creature into his backseat. His erratic actions expose a reckless nature and a fundamental inability to handle the consequences of his destructive choices.

The father is an older man who waits up for his teenage son while drinking. When his son arrives with a severely damaged car and an injured animal in the backseat, his initial anger transitions into a bewildered pragmatism. He models emotional numbness and addresses the gruesome reality of the situation without demanding any explanation from his son.

The deer is a wild animal struck by a car in the middle of the night. Severely injured and half-paralyzed, it is inexplicably loaded into the backseat of a Fairlane wagon. As it drifts between unconsciousness and panicked defense, the animal represents an unattainable wildness forced into unnatural confinement.