Quote of the Book Essay
By Whitney
For my final essay on the book, A River Runs Through It, I am going to write about a quote from the book. I chose this certain quote from the book because when I think about this book it reminds me of this specific saying. I did enjoy this book once I started to read it and understand what they were talking about. I didn’t care for all of the fishing though because I am not that big of a fishing kind of person. The book had its high and low points. I really enjoyed the relationship between the two brothers and fishing. It seemed like Paul always tried to out do Norman. Norman was the more mature and smarter of the two, while Paul was a troublemaker.
The quote I finally chose for this book was the first line of the book, “In our family there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing”. In this quote it really gives you at first look at their family and how they were living at the time. It also shows how close Paul, Norman, and their father was when they were children. This quote tells us how the family is very religious and also very loving. It shows how the three of them enjoy fly-fishing. Fly-fishing, to them, was obviously very important to the family if they compared it to their religion. In the beginning Norman talked about how they would attend church in the morning than read from the bible, then attend church again in the evening, and if they were correct on a question their father would ask they were allowed to go through the hills and were allowed to fish. This quote I feel really summed up the book really in the first sentence. It showed how much fishing meant to the family. In the end the family wouldn’t all be the same but when it all began they were all the same.
Fly-fishing in the beginning brought them all together and in the end it seemed like Paul tried to use it to get there fathers attention. Norman, I think did not really try to compare himself or tried to beat Paul in any way. Norman was more laid back and calm, while Paul was the troublemaker, which in the end would cost him his life. The quote at times does confuse me because at first I did not really understand the book at all, but now that I have finished the book I understand it more.