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“Haunted By the Waters”: Narrative Reconciliation in Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It. By Davis and Womack. Authors and Article Credibility. Kenneth Womack.
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“Haunted By the Waters”: Narrative Reconciliation in Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It By Davis and Womack
Kenneth Womack Is an English professor at Penn State University's Altoona College, where [he] teach[es] courses on twentieth-century literature and the Beatles. Todd F. Davis Todd F. Davis is Assistant Professor of English at Penn State Altoona, USA.
Books Written Kenneth Womack and Todd F. Davis have written around 24 books and/or articles together. Postmodern Humanism in Contemporary Literature and Culture Reconciling the Void Kenneth Womack and Todd F. Davis Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory Transitions Todd F. Davis and Kenneth Womack
Relevance • Gives the motivation for the novella • An example
Main Point:Womack and Davis explain how Norman Maclean finds solace from his family struggles, and specifically with his brother’s death, through writing A River Runs Through It as a way of moving on.
Relevant Quotes: • “I do not speak, at least in private, of A River Runs Through It as a story about the tragedy of my family – among friends, I speak of it as my love poem to my family” (1 Maclean). • “In our attempt to understand how narratives may offer healing and renewal, we must first examine, as Roberts suggests, the sociocultural context of Maclean’s novella, to recognize the relationship between the story’s meaning and the way in which Maclean tells his tale” (2 Womack, Kenneth and Todd F. Davis).
“To step outside the bounds of the accepted narrative code of his community and his family illustrates the import and gravity of the story with which Maclean wrestles.” (2 Womack, Kenneth and Todd F. Davis) • “As a powerful means of narrative therapy, A River Runs Through It allows Maclean to reconfigure his understanding of the past, to progress beyond the seemingly insurmountable emotional bonds of his Presbyterian upbringing, and to recognize, finally, his brother’s unmistakable impact upon the living world that Maclean inhabits in the present” (4 Womack, Kenneth and Todd F. Davis).
Errors in logic • In tenth paragraph – pg. 197 • “Clearly, Maclean’s story of love, loss, and reconciliation resonates in dramatic and significant ways with his community of readers, and, arguably, his narrative has taken on a life of its own, moving beyond the bounds of those who knew him or his text, in part because of the force and popularity of Robert Redford’s 1992 film adaptation of the novella.”
Works Cited Womack, Kenneth. “The Good Reads Author Profile.” Good Reads, August 2007. Web. 10 April 2010. “Todd F. Davis.” Macmillian Books, n.d. Web. 10 April 2010