Essay: Mark Slouka’s story “Crossing”

It is typical for fathers to make a “father and son” trip in Nature, or go on camping or fishing, both because it is cozy and also because children have to get some good experiences in the wild nature, and finally because their sons also have to learn about nature. These trips have not only the function to learn the sons about nature but it is also a great way to get closer as father and son. In Mark Slouka’s story “Crossing” from 2009 we are presented for the “father and son” ritual trip in Nature. We are meeting a considerate father in a sincere life crisis, but he still takes care of his son. So we are seeing a father that wants to maintain the good relationship with his son and find meaning in his own life. In this paper the narrative techniques and the significance of the setting will be lighted up. The theme “man and nature” will also be put into perspective to the film “Into the wild”.
In the story we are presented with a third person limited narrator and the father’s point of view. The narrator knows what the father thinks and feels, so we are also seeing the story from the father’s point of view. It is a limited narrator because we don’t have the admission to the boy’s feelings and thoughts but only know the father’s feelings and thoughts, “Where had it come from – this slide into weakness, this vision of death…” (l. 68-69) Here we are seeing the father’s inner thoughts. Slouka has written the story from the father’s point of view, because he wants to show how the father experiences the situation of having been divorced from the mother, and how he tries to keep the good relationship to his son. When we get admission to the father’s thoughts we also see, that he is struggling with some things in his life, which probably is the divorce “He hadn’t been happy in a while.” (l. 5). This narrative technique that Slouka uses has the effect that we as readers come very close to the father and become sympathetic with him. Also when we as readers know the father’s feelings we experience his pain and therefore we want him to succeed. The story is not built up chronological, but the story jump in time from the present time at the river to the past where the father picked up the child at the mother. We also experience the jump in time when the father thinks back to the past experiences at the river with his father. So the third person limited narrator and the fathers point of view have an effect in the way we interpret the history and the father’s thoughts and feelings.
As Slouka uses the third person limited narrator and the father’s point of view as a narrative technique he also uses the significance of the setting as a narrative technique. From the beginning of the story to the end we as the readers have the idea that something bad is going to happen. This build-up of suspense finds expression in the setting and the mood. In the beginning we as the readers feels a menacing mood because emptiness, mist and rain is dominating the description of the setting. As in the beginning we also see something ominous when we are hearing about the river and there are as well uncertainty about the river. The river is also bigger and more violent than the father remembered, ”The river was bigger than he remembered it, stronger.” (ll.34-35) For the father the river seemed now bigger and more terrifying than when he was a child, but this is normally inverted; when you grow up things seems smaller. So maybe the river could be a symbol of the situation of his life because he is not so happy and he is worried. The river is also a symbol of how difficult it is for the father to find “solid ground” because there is so much stream in a river, which symbolizes that it is complicated to stand up normal without tipping over.
The father is an unnamed man somewhere between 30-50 years old and he finds himself in a depression and is divorced from his wife. The main character has a desire to make amends because he wants to maintain the good relationship between him and his son. The nature is very important for the father, and he got an idea that a trip with the son out in Nature would establish and consolidate their relationship and make a good “father and son” tradition. Slouka’s story “Crossing” have many parallels to the movie “Into the wild”. Both Chris Supertramp from “Into the wild” and the father in “Crossing” are searching for a better place and a new every day in the wild. In the movie “Into the wild”, we see Chris Supertramp leave urban life and his plan is to stay away from the family for many years. The father in “Crossing” is also leaving the society with his son, but not on same level as Chris Supertramp. The father’s plans of staying in nature are not so extreme as Chris’, but he still isolates him and his son from the society, and he still does things that are not safe for a little child. Both Chris and the father are symbols of the “modern man” who wants to leave his problems.
Mark Slouka ends the story “Crossing” in an open ending, where we as readers don’t know whether nature will “win” or the father and son will survive. Slouka leaves the readers to decide whether the father and son should live or die. You could say that the father has a unique chance to save his son and therefore get some happiness in his life again and by this comes back on track in his everyday life. If the reader decide to think they die it would be tragic and unnecessary for us as the readers, as we are in a close relationship to the father and son because of the use of the narrative techniques.