3 ideas
For Lorenzo, who has little authority in his job, the hunt is a place where his expertise and judgment with terrain, dogs and game earn him pride and standing. It is one important source of his self-respect, alongside the dignity he also asserts at work and in everyday disputes, and this helps explain how firmly he holds on to the passion under money and family pressure.
When disposable income is tiny, a hobby stops being free time and becomes a line-by-line budget. Every shell fired, bus fare taken and licence paid competes directly with courtship, rent and marriage savings. The pastime therefore turns into a running negotiation between desire and obligation, and each shot carries a visible opportunity cost.
The novel is told entirely in Lorenzo's own slangy, colloquial diary voice, without authorial comment, so dialect and idiom carry much of the social portrait. The reader sees his pleasures, insight and conscious dignity firsthand, and can also read the scarcity and narrow circumstances surrounding them from what he records.