Crossing Mark Slouka Summary

Would you still have contact with your children, even if you are divorced? Would you still take care of them and love them? In the short story “Crossing” written by Mark Slouka in 2009, we will follow a divorced father and his son.

The short story is about a father and his son. The father is divorced from the son’s mother, but he still wants to preserve a good and healthy relationship with him. The father takes his son to a desolate place, where the father had experiences with his own father. The father carries their bags over a low, but flowing river, thereafter he goes back again and carries the boy over the river. They spend together the next day to challenge the desolate place. Later on the day, when they have to go over the river, the father knows that the water is flowing more than yesterday. When he carries the boy, he loses the footing. Although he

The build-up of suspense is based on the setting and the mood. Rain, fog and emptiness dominate the description of the environment they are in; “It was raining” (p.2. l.1) and “A black road”(p.2. l. 3-4). The river is the central setting. The river is bigger and more violent, than the protagonist remember: “The river was bigger than the remembered it, stronger” (p. 2-3. L. 34-35). The river itself also contains ominous sign, which helps to build suspense in the story. We have that feeling that something is going to happen, like in the river, there is a branch that is caught in a whirlpool that looks like something dead, something that has been shot: “Downstream, a branch caught in a deadfall read up like something shot, then tore loose” (p. 3. L. 38-39).

We can conclude that the father has had good experiences with his own father. That is why he also wants to give his son the same experiences, like he remembers. Even if he knows that the flow of the water has been more violent, he still wants to go through the