...Crossing - Mark Slouka We all make mistakes in our lives. We lose the people we love and we break bonds of trust we otherwise thought were unbreakable. The tragic thing is that no matter how much we want to make things right, there will always be the great risk of making yet another error. In Mark Slouka’s Crossing a divorced man takes his young son out on a camping trip, seeking to rebuild their relationship by conquering the river Quinault. But few circumstances can be controlled when you’re dealing with nature and the risk of making a fatal mistake whilst crossing the thin line of trust and the river might be too big. In this essay the characters and the relationships between them, the narrative technique and the setting will be examined in order to understand the core of the story. The protagonist of the story is a divorced man who has arranged a camping trip with his young son. It is clear from the start that the relationship between the two of them and his ex-wife/girlfriend is damaged. When he comes to pick up his son from the mother, he enters the house ‘’…ducking his head like a visitor…(line 16)’’ and is very cautious of how the mother observes the interaction between him and the boy. During this scene it also becomes clear that he has a desire to make things right between the three of them, thus arranging the camping adventure. As the father and son drive into the woods it is revealed that it isn’t just any random trip; it’s the same trip that the father used to...
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...Crossing The short story Crossing is written by Mark Slouka and published in 2009. It takes its focus on the relationship between father and son. It is typical American that a father takes his son for a trip in the nature to pass on his knowledge about the nature and to show how to become a real man. In this case the trip is meant to strengthen their relationship, but the father runs into some challenges along the way. The short story is written through an all-knowing limited third person narrator. The narrator refers to the persons with their names and the narrator shows us the thoughts and feelings of the father. We only read the persons feelings through the narrator, and he has already given the persons their personality, which makes the narrator an all-knowing limited narrator, this makes the reader feel sympathy with the father, because the plot is based around his thoughts and experiences. Because of the limited narrator, there is no access to the son’s mind; instead the author uses physical descriptions through the father’s eyes. “He looked over at the miniature jeans, the sweatshirt bunched beneath the seat belt’s strap, the hiking boots dangling off the floor like weights. “You okay?” (p. 1, ll. 7-8. The father sees him as fragile and something he has to protect at all costs. The language in the story is a commonly spoken language, as we know from our everyday life, which also makes the story easy to read, like this quote: “The old man calling back of his shoulder...
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...Crossing The short story, ‘Crossing’, is written by Mark Slouka in 2009, and takes up father and son relationship together with man vs. nature. From the beginning of time fathers have taken their sons on camping trips or similar to pass on their knowledge about how to conquer Mother Nature. But more important it binds them closer together, and this is exactly these two purposes the father here wishes to obtain. Through a third person limited narrator the reader is presented to a father who has a hard time in life after a divorce from his wife. Therefore he is now determined to find something that matters and has set his heart on maintaining a strong and sound relationship to his young son, ‘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’(19-20). He believes that they can bond through male-things, things the son cannot do with his mother. By choosing something he himself did with his father he makes it more ritually and secret, it is something only father and son share. As the narrator only knows what the main character, the father, thinks, feels and recalls, it is naturally told from his point of view. We get glimpse of the things that he struggles with, ‘he hadn’t been happy in a while’ (5). By using this narrative technique Slouka brings us closer to the father, and the readers feel and experience his pain first-hand, consequently the readers also want him to succeed. Because of the limited...
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...Analytical essay of ”Crossing” - Mark Slouka “No love is greater than that of a father for His son” – This quote can be related to the short story crossing, which is written by Mark Slouka. The father (Narrator) has a past where he failed a lot on the family-front, now he is trying to make things better by trying to improve his bond to his son. A relationship between a son and his father is difficult to maintain when the sons father and mother are divorced. The custody is typically awarded to the mother of the child. How would a father behave when he get the chance to strengthen the bond between his son and himself? Mark Slouka has used third-person limited omniscient narrator. This means a few things for the narrative technique. Typical for a third-person narrator is the use of pronouns like “he, she, they, them” which is shown in the short story Crossing. EX: “When the first car appeared he could see it from a long way off…” “When they came out of the trees and onto the stony beach…” Third-person limited omniscient narrator also means that the narrator knows everything but he does not necessarily disclose everything, which is to make the reader want to read the story to get all of the veiled parts of the story. The omniscient narrator is also shown here, because the reader get to know what he thinks.“… he thought, maybe – maybe he could make this right” The short story takes place in the state Tacoma, Washington, USA. This can be seen in the very beginning of the...
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...Crossing Old traditions never die. Over thousands of years have fathers and sons taking on fishing trips. It is something very classic traditions to do. It creates a closer relationship between father and son. The shot story ”Crossing” is written by Mark Slouka in 2009. The title is crossing. The obvious reason why the title is crossing is because the father and his son have to cross a river. But usually is there always something deeper behind. Crossing can also mean to cross something in your life. You have to cross through hard times in your life. After I have read the story do I think the title crossing, can relate to the death. You are crossing from the earth and into the heaven. The short story is about a father and his son that try to cross a river. The father takes his own son to exactly the same place that he went with his own father back in the days. In the beginning of this story are we introduced with the father and his very difficult period of his life. He always reminds himself about his own childhood. When he was about 17 years old, took his father and him on a trip. He had a bad relationship with his father. His father often speaks hard to him and use swearword when he talk to his son. I think because he had a bad relationship to his own father and he has felt it first-hand. In the text: ““ It didn’t matter. Whatever it was had passed. He and his son would be friends. Nothing mattered more.” That shows us that he only want to be a better father...
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...Crossing The shot story ”Crossing” is written by Mark Slouka in 2009. The short story brings us through a dangerous situation about a father and son trying to cross a wild river. It is a great trip for a father to spend some quality time with his son out in the wild nature and to bond with each other. It is very typical for an American family, to have such values about a “father and son relationship”. The father in this story takes his son to a place where he went with his own father, when he was young. This brings me to the theme of the story, which could be “disappointment” or “failure”. It is mentioned that the father has done a lot of “fuckups” and he does not want this experience with his son to become one of those fuckups. At the beginning of the short story we are introduced to the father, and the difficult period of his life that he is in. The father reminds himself of his own childhood, when he was seventeen years old and went with his father on a trip into the wild. He gets very disappointed when he returns with his son and realizes that the barn and all the other things in the forest are barely recognizable. He might have had a bad relationship with his own father and does not want the same relationship with his own son. He also remembers some of the bad things about his own father, especially the way he spoke to him as a child, when the father yelled “Don’t fucking fall” (p.2, l. 63). The father could also be divorced from the mother of his son, where he is looking...
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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...
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...Crossing is a short story, which is written by Mark Slouka in 2009. The short story takes up father and son relationship. The father takes his son out on a trip to pass on their knowledge about how to conquer Mother Nature. But more important on that trip is, that it binds the father and the son together, and that is exactly what the father wishes to obtain. Through a third person narrator, the reader is presented to a father and his son. The father is pretending in the short story as a father who has a hard time in life after a divorce from his wife. Because of the divorce the father is now determined to find something that matters, and he wants a strong and sound relationship to his son, I don’t think the father have anything else in his life since the wife divorced him, and therefore he wants a good relationship with his son, so he wont lose him as well. It seems like it was the mother who wants the divorce, and it seems like the father has done something wrong which not could be forgiven “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” and in that moment the father gets this idea that the son and him can bond trough male things, he wants to do things that the boy cannot do with his mother, by choosing something he did with his own father. Sometimes we gets glimpse of the things the father is struggled with, “He hadn’t been happy in a while”, that quote tells us that the father has lost the...
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...Crossing Mark Slouka wrote the short story “Crossing” in 2009. This short brings us through a dangerous situation about a farther and son trying to cross a wild river. It is a great trip for a farther to spend some quality time with his son out in the wild nature and to bond with each other. It is very typical for an American family, to have such values about a “farther and son relationship”. The farther in this story takes his son to a place where he went with his own farther, when he was young. This brings me to the theme of the story, which could be “disappointment” or “failure”. It is mentioned that farther has made many “fuckups” and he does not want this experience with his son to become one of those fuckups. At the beginning of the short story, we are introduced to the farther, and the difficult period of his life that he is in. The farther reminds himself of his childhood, when he was seventeen years old and went with his farther on a trip into the wild. He gets very disappointed when he returns with his son and realizes that the barn and all the other things in the forest are barely recognizable. He has probably had a bad relationship with his own farther, and does not wish the same for him and his own son. He also thinks back on some of the bad things about his own farther, especially the way he spoke to him as a child “Don’t fucking fall” (p.2, l. 63). The farther is also divorced from the son’s mother he looks at “…the azaleas he’d planted…” (p.1, l.14) and thinking...
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...Crossing Life can be hard and difficult. Life is a challenge and it can be hard to be a dad and make your kids happy. As a parent you want do to everything for your children and be the best parent you possibly can. Every father or mother wants the perfect relationship to his or her children but it can be a challenge and go wrong even though it is in a good thought. Like we see in the short story “Crossing” by Mark Slouka, we see a dad that tries his hardest to make his little boy happy. He wants to do what his dad did for him to his son. He is so eager to be the perfect parent that it goes wrong. The narrator in ”Crossing” is a 3rd person narrator and you the story is told from the dad’s point of view. The dad is ”limited” because we don’t know the boy’s feelings but only the dad’s feelings. This makes us get sympathise with the dad and they boy. The boy because he is very small and then you get the dad’s point of view on the boy. The narrator’s effect on the story makes us feeling like we are being drawn in to the story, we follows him, and get sympathise with the little boy and the dad. The narrator relationship is important so we can understand the text. The dad is thinking a lot about the trips he took with his own father when he was a little boy. It was a tradition to go to these trips so therefore he takes his son with him. But he also thinks about how hard it was to succeed the trip with his dad so it is a kind of ritual. It is the rite of passage. On a trip like...
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...Crossing ‘Crossing’ is a short story published in 2009, by Mark Slouka. We are introduced to a depressed father, who takes his son on a trip, in the hope of achieving a stronger relationship with his son. The father appears to be very attached to his previous/past experiences with his own father, and in that context a theme such as the relationship between father and son can be related/connected to the text. The story is told from a 3rd person limited narrator. The limited view is seen by the author’s attachment to the main character, who is the father. The story is described through the father’s point-of-view, which can be seen by the big insight the reader is given, on the father’s thoughts and feelings, during the story. The narrator use ‘he’ in relation to the father, which clarifies that it is a 3rd person narrator. The narrative technique contributes to create a personal impression of the father, and creates a relationship between the reader and main character because of the knowledge that readers are given during the story. “For some reason it made him happy, and he hadn’t been happy for a while” The techniques also force the reader to feel compassion for the father, because we know his thoughts and feelings. The readers do not get an insight on the son’s thoughts and feelings, and we do not know what his attitude towards the situation is, therefor it creates a distant relationship between the son and reader. Another narrative technique, that contributes to create...
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