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¶ … River Runs Through it' can be easily described as a masterpiece because it has all the right elements needed to qualify for the title. It has some very powerful themes, a sound storyline, a realistic but sensitive perspective and on top of everything, some truly magnificent characters. While discussing the book, one can often get lost into a myriad of themes that have been woven into this autobiographical text and for this reason, it is important to see book from the standpoint that the reader can relate to. In other words, the book has something to offer to everyone from those who strongly believe in religion and natural force to those who maintain a secular stance on issues. However the one theme that easily dominates the rest is that of art and the role it plays in one's life. This theme is however combined with fly-fishing that more or less works as the device used to explain what art means and how it differs from mere competence.
Norman's father who was a Presbyterian minister believed that art was 'one' way man could clearly understand God and His creation. He advocated creativity because for Norman's father, art was the channel man used to communicate with God and to become a part of His wide universe. In short, it was not competence but mastery of art that helped man establish a direct link with the wider world around him and Art was man's way of showing appreciation for God's universe. This is the reason why Norman's father tells him to...
"It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us." (160-61)
But it is the art of fly-fishing, which helps us understand the differences that exist between competence and art. In this book, the art of fly-fishing is what the author uses to explain why competence is not the same thing as mastery of an art and why a skilled man did not fall in the same category as an artist. Fly-fishing may serve other purposes in the book too, but it has actually been used to accentuate the meaning of art and to pit art against competence to show how the true winner is.
Paul, Norman's younger brother, is the artist in the book while Norman himself is a man who believed in competence but didn't really understand the philosophy of art as Paul did. Even though Paul was three years younger, yet he was more in tune with his father's philosophy of fly-fishing being an art. Paul knew what his father meant when he said that "man by nature was a mess and had fallen from an original state of grace" (p.2) and that "all good things -- trout as…
Reference:
Maclean, Norman. A River Runs Through It And Other Stories. 1976. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992
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