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Essay- Crossing
The short story ”Crossing” by Mark Slouka, written in 2009 is about a father and his son who is on a trip. The title of the short story is "Crossing" And this title is up to what the story is about. My interpretation of this story is that the message is to rebuild trust in relationships can be difficult. The main character tries so hard to rebuild his relationship with his son by making him trust him when the cross the river. Because it could happen that he slips on the rocks in the river, so actually the son let his life depends on a trust to his father. The main character is a man who has a young son and he were married once. The text does not tell us directly that he is divorced but there are things that leads up to the fact that he was for example, it says on page 1 line 15 “For a long time he hadn't wanted her back”. This tells us that he is separated from a woman but not that they are divorced. Another example could be when he looks at the yard page 1 line 14 “the azaleas he'd planted” This tells us that he once had lived there and planted an azaleas. Based on these facts about the man I would guess that he is around his thirties. The main character has hope for getting his son’s trust back and therefore he arranges a trip to an old barn across the river. The main character is the one who has destroyed the relationship with his wife because on page 4 line 135 is says, “My God, All his other fuckups were just preparations for this.” The main character has no name in the story and there is no personal description of him. Instead, there is a lot more focus on his thoughts and he is also pretty reflective. He is a very nervous man and this has a big effect on the mood of the story. For example, on page 3 line 110-112, “He tried not to look at the boy sitting where he'd left him on the opposite shore because there was something about the smallness

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