30 pages • 1 hour read
Norman MacleanA River Runs Through It
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1976A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Healing Power of Nature
For Norman Maclean, peace is found in nature, and the natural world represents a haven from the threats posed by human frailty and evil. In the Maclean family, there is no strict separation between religion and nature. Nature is an expression of perfection and the oneness of all creation.
In many scenes, Norman explains how he loses his worries and troubles while fishing and finds peace. He becomes one with nature. Norman seems to enjoy the peace he finds sitting on the bank after he finishes fishing, or talking with his father or brother on the riverbank, nearly as much as he enjoys the act of fishing itself.
Norman is not the only Maclean to experience this peaceful union with nature: his father brings a book to read while he is waiting for his sons to finish fishing on their last fishing trip together. Of this book, the Bible, Rev. Maclean says, “‘In the part I was reading it says the Word was in the beginning, and that’s right. I used to think water was first, but if you listen carefully you will hear what the words are underneath the water’” (95). According to Rev. Maclean, all of creation is united with the water, and the river symbolizes the natural world.
The whole experience of fishing, for Norman, is one of connection with self and, through nature, with others. The end of the novella reinforces this theme: Norman rejoins those he has lost through connecting with them during fly fishing; he hears their words underneath the water.
Are We Our Brother’s Keepers?
Both Jessie and Norman have troubled brothers in their families. Paul, an inveterate drinker and gambler, and Neal, an alcoholic, are deeply loved, but not understood, by their loved ones.
For example, Norman comments that his mother favors Paul and loves him more, even though she understands him less. In Jessie’s family, Florence is over-protective of Neal; at times protecting him from the consequences of his actions, such as when she blames Norman and Paul for abandoning Neal on the family picnic. Jessie, along with Paul and Old Rawhide, believe that Norman should try to help Neal. Norman disappoints everyone by not being able to help Neal with fly fishing, though he does his best to help Neal, demonstrating his willingness to act as Neal’s keeper.
Norman believes that he is his brother’s keeper (28-29), and his life is overshadowed by the loss of Paul and his guilt about not doing more to help him. Maclean’s theme, as explored through Norman’s relationships with Paul and Neal, suggests that we are indeed our brother’s keeper.
At the time of Paul’s death, Rev. Maclean lifts Norman’s burden by disclosing several emotional truths, including the fact that people can only be helped if they want help, and that even if a person wants to help, he may not be able to provide the help that is most needed. In turn, Norman comforts his father by saying that a person can love another person completely without completely understanding him. They sustain and support one another, though they continue to grieve for Paul.
Otherness and Identity
The character of Paul reveals the tension that exists between members of society who fit in and members of society who are outsiders, or somehow ‘other.’ In their small communities in Montana, the Maclean brothers appear to be able to fit in; Norman lives a stable life with his wife, and in nearby Missoula, their father Rev. Maclean holds an important role in the community. Despite these circumstances, Paul is a misfit, as evidenced by his inability to live by the rules that govern his society and his state of grace while away from society in the natural world.
Paul, a gifted fly fisherman, communicates with the river in a way that his brother and his father cannot; in turn, he regards the river and the nature that surrounds it as sacred. In contrast, Paul’s treatment of the human world around him is characterized by alcohol and violence, which are both coping mechanisms; Paul’s inability to fit himself into human society is confirmed when he dies in a drunken brawl. All of the bones in his punching hand are broken, suggesting that his animalistic nature emerged even as his death was imminent.
An early episode marking Paul’s identification with the other takes place when Paul defends his date from a racist remark and endangers himself in a destructive show of violence. First of all, Paul is with a Native American woman, who is also other. Paul’s decision to be with a Native American woman suggests that he is unafraid to seek a relationship with someone who is different from him and more importantly, different to what his society expects of him. When Paul attacks the man who makes a racist comment towards his date, Paul demonstrates his innate inability to tolerate bad treatment; as a protector of others and an other himself, he understands the pain of living with an identity that is mismatched with the mainstream.
