In this last section of The Same River Twice, the memoir neatly wraps up the latent expectations that I have had from the beginning with Rita’s pregnancy. When Chris decides to leave Boston to be a naturalist in the Everglades, he had a heck of a time catching a ride that far down. I thought it was pretty funny how other hitchhikers had left a heads up to the rest that it was going to be a hard task to accomplish by engraving how long it took to get a ride on the back of a road sign. Once he got to the swamp, he wrote, “Initially, life in Flamingo reminded me of a rooming house—inhabited by kooks and outcasts, dice that rolled off the table, wrinkles on the face of God.” This quote included several metaphors that helped draw a picture of the type of people Chris was amongst. However, after meeting the Captain, Chris seemed to find someone to trust in. Whenever he slept over with the captain and his wife, though, Chris said, “His son has come between us in a way I never understood. Captain Jack seemed to resent knowledge of him, the way a man feels anger toward a friend who saved his life.” In my opinion, the captain built a barrier between himself and Chris afterwards as not to get too close to him. He had seen the same characteristics within Chris when he jumped into the “shark water” to save the boy that he knew his son had possessed to save three men during war, and he didn’t want to get close to Chris in fear of losing him as well. From there, everything just seemed to get worse for Chris as all of his co-workers seemed to turn their backs on him. He was at his lowest point, which is well represented whenever he said, “In the sudden rain I realized I was crying, utterly frustrated by my failure to be defeated.” Failure usually means defeat, but that was not what Chris was seeking. He wanted to be defeated; he wanted it all to end. It was as if he had come to an epiphany that he was too old to be living such a reckless, unstructured life, realizing that after twelve years, he had nothing to show from his adventures, not even a reliable friend. Things started looking up for him after Hurricane Jacob, whenever he left to go back to Boston to stay with Shadrack. It was there that he met Rita and his life began to fall into place as an adult’s should. They eventually got married, moved around a few times, and settled in Iowa after he was accepted into a graduate program there. It was there that they decided to have a baby, and Rita’s pregnancy was recorded in every other chapter of the memoir. Their son finally arrived in the final chapter, and in the Epilogue he is three months old. Chris carries him on his back to his first escapade in the woods, remarking, “The load on my back weighs nothing and everything.” I loved this quote, which suggests that even though the baby is very light, he has come to mean everything to him. So much as changed in Chris’s life, but he realizes just how much these changes mean to him. We have finally seen Chris grow up to be a real man with real priorities.
Vocabulary Words
Ø Vagrant (Page 154): a person without a settled home
Ø Androgynous (Page 159): having characteristics of both male and female
Ø Corrugated (Page 162): creased, shaped into folds
Ø Egret (Page 171): a heron that is white or buff
Ø Preemptive (Page 178): taken as a measure against something possible, anticipated, or feared
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