Frida Kahlo's "The Little Deer" is an emotional picture that presents us with the opportunity to feel sympathy and empathy for the artist through the use of symbolism. The self-portrait depicts Kahlo as a deer - her head on a deer's body - running through the woods. There are nine visible arrows stabbed into her in various places from which blood drips. Large antlers extend from either side of Kahlo's head as she faces us with a blank expression and her trademark uni-brow. A fallen branch lies beneath Kahlo and, in the foreground, sits a tree with a broken arm.

   Though we are presented with a still picture that can be examined for black & white facts, there is much to be inferred from the symbols and representations in this self-portrait of Frida Kahlo. The arrows that stick into her body can be considered a representation of pain, and pain alone, though logic dictates that the arrows be fired from someone or something. Whether painting herself as a hunted deer implies she is being killed by something or is just an expression of pain this is still a good use of symbolism. She could be conveying emotional/psychological pain or physical pain caused either by the accident or the subsequent trauma she had to live with.

   The fallen branch could mean a number of things depending on how far you regress when inferring information. The simple branch could mean lost hope or something dead, but when you further deduct that it must have come from a tree you could come to believe that Kahlo is trying to say there is a part of herself, or her life, that is broken or missing and cannot be fixed.

   At first glance it just looks like Kahlo’s head on a deer’s body with arrows stuck into her, but when you look at it closer you can see that she is trying to convey emotion and a painful part of her life.