Analysis: All Over But The Shoutin By Rick Bragg

The relationship between father and son is something complex and fragile. It is generally built from childhood, a very tender point in life, and in some cases the father chooses to shirk his responsibilities rather than be an active presence in their child’s life. This is an incredibly popular topic in all facets of media, and is the subject of “All Over but the Shoutin”, by Rick Bragg. The narrator’s feelings in the piece are quite obviously complicated, and the reader sees him grapple with them and, in the end, come out of it more confused than when he started. This memoir explores the legacy of childhood animosity, and how that animosity can be a burden all the way into adulthood and trying to forgive and forget is much easier said than …show more content…
Upon arrival, the author works up the courage to visit his father for the first time in years, and finds simply a shadow of the man he remembers (217). Bragg imagines his father “a still-young man” and “trim, swaggering, and high-toned like a little rooster,” yet it would only be logical to think of the passage of time, and the fact that clearly his father would have felt the touch of time just as anyone else. However, it is easier to hate an image of a person, and this image he has built of the man he despised for these years. The narrator says that his father would drink excessively and left his family without any means to survive, and seemed to not regret or lose any sleep over the indiscretions. When he encounters his father instead of the image of him in his mind, he is almost unrecognizable. Bragg is shocked, upended to find him like the “walking dead…damaged, poisoned…to die.” The person, and image, Bragg had been so mentally wounded by in childhood was already …show more content…
The two share some father-son moments, the father seems to try make some effort to make up for lost time by asking what hobbies he enjoys to giving him gifts, however, Braggs states, "He never once said he was sorry.” (218). This makes it difficult for the author to really move past his childhood; he says something to the effect of it being a product of his time, a side effect of a culture, where men are not supposed to show any emotional vulnerability. The author, however, does not need an over the top heart-to-heart with his father; he just wants some sort of acknowledgment that his father knows his actions were wrong. However, he does not get that, which plays a part in the author still not being able to truly move forward from his father’s ill-treatment of himself, and his family. Now, his father goes on to surprise him with a gun that he had been saving for the author and some books that he had purchased for him when he was a boy. This emotion confuses the author’s because it reminds him of the lighter side of his childhood and makes him wonder if his dad really did care about him, when he bought the gifts for his son, even if it was in a warped, convoluted manner; this is where these feelings of forgiveness start to bubble up. He thanks him and seems truly moved by these events, but the light of forgiveness starts to dim to a faint glow when his