A River Runs Through It Book Report

Flannery O’Conner’s “The River” is a very interesting story about a little boy whose parents would prefer if he just went away. At the end of the story, the little boy did get away from them for good. In my opinion this story has a weird but interesting meaning to it. The little boy’s death at the end made me question the spiritual meaning of it; however, after thinking about I understood the intentional meaning O’Conner could have for readers.

A River Runs through It, by Norman Maclean,is a story about a family of a Minister father, a mother and their two sons living in a small town in Montana. The film begins with the narrator Norman, the older brother of the two explaining how his father had asked him to write their family story. As the film continues it becomes clear how different the brothers become. In A River Runs Through It brothers, Norman and Paul are very different; Paul tends to act before thinking while Norman on the other hand, tends to think about his every move with precision, Paul became a reporter while Norman became a professor and poet, Paul is more attracted to Fly Fishing and Norman is more drawn to his religion.

If anyone in A River Runs Through It had potential, it was Paul. He was a master at fly fishing and young at that. Reverend Maclean, Paul and Norman’s father, thought of Paul as a much greater fisherman than even himself when he said, “‘He is beautiful’”(Maclean 108). One of the reasons Paul’s death is so sad is because one feels like he would have been able to do so much more as he grew up. He was, after all, a talented individual. Paul was a great newspaper reporter, and he had a steady job in Helena. “When it came to choosing a profession, he became a reporter. On a Montana paper”(Maclean 7).With this job, he was able to keep the family updated on any current events they might have missed. Aside from all of Paul’s amazing traits that he possessed, he was a man of many flaws as

Finally, he is “haunted by waters” because they contain the memories and words of everyone Norman has ever connected with. This demonstrates Norman’s deep connection to the river, and how the way he understands his life is through the river, and without it, cannot find the words to explain how he has grown accept his life. For Maclean, the river was

The novella and movie A River Runs Through It show a few different motifs. A motif is a theme that keeps showing up as symbols. Three of the motifs were family, water, and hands.

The river and creek separate but also bring together. The river separates by serving as a boundary, in Luke’s words, for “our side of the river” (Grisham 184). “Siler’s Creek,” observes Luke, “ran along the northern boundary of our farm” (127). Things were different once the boundary was crossed. The world on the other side was dangerous; in contradistinction, there was safety on the

In Carver’s short story, “So Much Water So Close to Home,” three men go to Naches River for a fishing trip and encounter a dead young woman in the river. Aware that the corpse is in the river, they continue on with their fishing trip, not reporting it until they travel back home. Carver illustrates the story through the eyes of Claire, the wife of the fisher. Carver depicts the differences in male and female roles of a marriage and their psychological similarities, associated with why there was a need to travel to further waters, when there is “So Much Water So Close to Home.”

The main points of the story were to explain life on the river. Louth life was brutal at times, many workers would never regret their choice of profession. In the beginning of the story, one man talks about how working on the river is all some kids dreamed of. (Curry 28) This is not persuading readers to work on the river, it is informing readers that this is just a way of life for most living in river cities or towns. ¨ These were the days when pilots made $600 to $700 a month and bank presidents made $75 to $100 a day.¨(Curry 143) With harsh conditions, there came a reward to these workers. Throughout the book there were perfect examples and accounts from the men and women as to how readers should view this era of river

As Norman and Paul grow older, they remain very close. This is meant figuratively and literally, as Redford’s use of Mise-En-Scene helps to establish just how close the relationship between the two is. There are dozens of shots within the film, where the boys (and later men) are standing next to each other completely alone and at an extreme long shot, with the vast Montana wilderness behind them. This technique of camera distance and character closeness gives the film and the boys’ relationship an “us against the world” feel, and also connects the boys closeness directly to the setting in which they grew up. Another way Redford conveys the importance of Montana and the river to the boys’ lives is with voice over placed on panning

“‘You know more that that,’ my father said. ‘He was beautiful.’” -p. 61 Beauty has no limit to what it can be used to describe. It can be a book written by Mark Twain or Stephen King. It can be a piece of artwork created by Leonardo DA Vinci or Vincent Van Gogh. It can be a mountain range on the edge of Africa or Europe. It can be a lake located in California or Maine. It can even be a fly fisherman from Missoula, Montana named Paul Maclean. Throughout A River Runs Through It, Paul displays many beautiful characteristics, among those being: artistic, wise, and independent.

In front of the low horizontal limb of a giant sycamore there is an ash pile made by fires; the limb is worn smooth by men who have sat on it” (2). This portrayal of the river that George and Lennie will eventually arrive at paints the picture of a place that has been visited by various types of people for various types of reasons, but most importantly that those people have left. For example, boys went to the river to swim, less fortunate and often homeless men and women went there to sleep, and other people just went there to relax and sit on the trees. There are traces of these people there exemplified by the fact that ashes from the fire are still there, but the space demonstrates the feeling that the river is a place for brief encounters, but a place for nobody to stay. Thus, To Be in a Rushing River takes place at the river to further encompass the theme of what is temporary.

Extra! Extra! There’s been a new religion created by the Maclean family, called fly-fishing! Bet everyone’s thinking what the heck is this girl talking about? Well in the movie River Runs Through It directed by Robert Redford, Norman Maclean says, “In our family, there was no clear between religion and fly-fishing”(River Runs Through It). In River Runs Through It directed by Robert Redford, the unique, loyal, and young Paul searches for love, truth, and identity.

The most influential person in Norman Maclean’s life is his father. His father, a Scot and Presbyterian minister, was the one to give him his knowledge of all things. Maclean’s father raised them to think fly fishing and religion were considered of one piece. His father had a natural appreciation for all natural beauty’s, which is what Maclean inherited. Maclean wasn’t allowed to just pick up a rod and throw it in the water. He had to learn how to fish properly. For his father, didn’t believe someone should disgrace fish by fishing if you didn’t know how. Fishing was an art that shouldn’t be disrespected. He had to learn how to cast Presbyterian style. Because he learned fly fishing he had to learn how the fish react to learn to use the right

It is clear that Nick’s journey represents the modernist search for individuality in the midst of a broken society. While alone by the water, Nick witnesses a trout. Although it is just a simple trout, the way in which it moves provides a strong sense of meaning: A big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through the surface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as he went back into the stream under the surface, his shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current, unresisting, to his post under the bridge where he tightened facing up into the current. (“Big Two-Hearted River: Part I” 1202)

First of all, we can see that the real problem in this book is love, because it is a strange, exhilarating, and dangerous force, as shown by Buck’s relationship to John Thornton. In the late fall, the protagonist, Buck, is waiting by the riverbank, as his owners are trying to get their boat past a river’s furious rapids to continue on their journey. Then, suddenly, “The boat [flirs] over and snub[s] in to the bank bottom up, while Thornton, [is] flung sheer out of it, [and is] carried down-stream toward the worst part of the rapids, a stretch of wild water in which no swimmer [can] live. Buck [springs] in on the instant; and at the end of three hundred yards, amid a mad swirl of water, he overhaul[s] Thornton.”(London 46). Using imagery, London is