Crossing by Mark Slouka
Assignment A:
“Crossing” by Mark Slouka
“Crossing” is a short story written by Mark Slouka. It takes up the themes about the relationship between father and son and the situation of a divorced family. These themes are being dealt with, when the father and his son are going on the same ritually camping trip, that he went on with his own father.
In the story the reader are being introduced to a father and his son. The father is taking his son on a camping trip as an attempt to trying to connect with his son. They have to cross a river, which is a very demanding task. We hear that the father has just been divorced and he picks up his son at his ex-wife’s house, where you get the impression that it is a bit tense between them, maybe because he has disappointed her through the years of their marriage. He also says, right in the beginning on page 1, line 5 that he hasn’t been happy for a while and later he says that he also hasn’t cared much about anything lately. Though he has had a hard time and struggles with finding meaning with his life, he hasn’t lost all hope about everything being okay. It shows on page 1, line 18-20: “…and at some point he saw her watching them, leaning against the kitchen counter in her bathrobe, and when he looked at her she shook her head and looked away and at that moment he thought, maybe - maybe he could make this right.”
With the third person limited narrator, the story is told from the father’s point of view. Through the story the reader gets glimpses of his thoughts and feelings. It’s a narrative technique that makes the reader feel closer to the father and feel sympathy for him. Their relationship seems very distant, and you get the impression that the father hasn’t cared much about his son and hasn’t had a real connection with him for a while. The distance between the father and his son is shown by how the father thinks about him. In every thought from the father’s point of view, he calls him “the boy” and not “my son”. As
“Crossing” by Mark Slouka
“Crossing” is a short story written by Mark Slouka. It takes up the themes about the relationship between father and son and the situation of a divorced family. These themes are being dealt with, when the father and his son are going on the same ritually camping trip, that he went on with his own father.
In the story the reader are being introduced to a father and his son. The father is taking his son on a camping trip as an attempt to trying to connect with his son. They have to cross a river, which is a very demanding task. We hear that the father has just been divorced and he picks up his son at his ex-wife’s house, where you get the impression that it is a bit tense between them, maybe because he has disappointed her through the years of their marriage. He also says, right in the beginning on page 1, line 5 that he hasn’t been happy for a while and later he says that he also hasn’t cared much about anything lately. Though he has had a hard time and struggles with finding meaning with his life, he hasn’t lost all hope about everything being okay. It shows on page 1, line 18-20: “…and at some point he saw her watching them, leaning against the kitchen counter in her bathrobe, and when he looked at her she shook her head and looked away and at that moment he thought, maybe - maybe he could make this right.”
With the third person limited narrator, the story is told from the father’s point of view. Through the story the reader gets glimpses of his thoughts and feelings. It’s a narrative technique that makes the reader feel closer to the father and feel sympathy for him. Their relationship seems very distant, and you get the impression that the father hasn’t cared much about his son and hasn’t had a real connection with him for a while. The distance between the father and his son is shown by how the father thinks about him. In every thought from the father’s point of view, he calls him “the boy” and not “my son”. As