I was very excited to finish The Same River Twice because of how much I have enjoyed reading the book. The way Chris Offutt tied up his memoir actually brought about a few scary scenes during which I was preparing myself for the worst. One of these involved Rita and her delivery because she was so late--I was convinced that she was going to have a stillbirth. However, the situation also sparked some memories for me, that my mom always talks about. On page 178, Chris says, "The baby is two weeks overdue, a sign of intelligence." I never knew this fact, but I could relate to it because I was born three weeks late. The irony of this is that I also started school a year younger than the typical student and have excelled without issue.
Another excerpt that grabbed my attention from this section on the book was on page 165, "A four-year-old boy leaned over the water, his body between the rails. Slowly hi feet rose into the air and I watched his little legs slide overboard."The scene is described longer than that on the page. This scene terrified me because it was brought about completely out of nowhere. I was not expecting that whatsoever and was thrown off guard. Amidst the lolligagging descriptions throughout the chapter, this was a burst of drama, sucking the reader back into the story. Chris' immediate instinct to jump in the water to save the boy was very impressive.
The last section that I related to was on page 167, "My official poetry notebook rapidly filled with journal entries. Friendless and stranded as I was, the journal became a prolonged scream into the swamp, the incessant chatter of a man talking to himself. This was my most productive period." The reason I connected with this was because I tend to do the exact same thing what I am down or stressed. In times that I feel like I cannot speak to others about my problems, I write them down or talk to myself in a similar manner, which is exactly what Offutt did when he was going through hard times.
Vocabulary I was unfamiliar with:
Malevolent: wishing evil to harm others
Managerial: having to do with manager functions
Lithely: flexible
Druid: a member of the pre-Christian religious order
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