Symbolism In The Third Bank Of The River

In The Third Bank of the River, as time passed by, the narrator’s father would be doing the same thing he’s been doing: floating around the river aimlessly. I mean, who wouldn’t call this man crazy? He does nothing in the water, and doesn’t set a foot on land for years. Although the story does not explain why his father does this, there must be a reason why. Yet without reason, the rest of the town and the narrator’s family chooses to ignore the father’s potential reasoning, and persists on calling the man ‘crazy’. And why might they be doing this? Perhaps it may be out of jealousy? Or maybe there is just a misunderstanding. In the beginning, the narrator describes his father as “dutiful, orderly, [and] straightforward” (para. 1). He illustrates him as a man who may be …show more content…
He simply just put his hat on and headed to the river with his new boat as the narrator’s mother howled for her husband to stay away and to never come back. As the audience, we don’t get an explanation on why his father left abruptly, so we use the symbols given. The river itself is the father, his life, and what it had become. He did not leave the river, and knew it like the back of his hand. Like the river, he was “solitary, aimless, like a derelict” (para. 9). He hit a point in his life where it he hit rock bottom and had no drive to go anywhere, like his journey in the river. For whatever reason he may had, he made his decision. Towards the end of the story, the narrator offers to take his father’s place in the boat, but then changed his mind realizing that he did not his life to be like his father’s. In the end, without knowing his father’s intention of leaving his family to take his aimless journey in the river, his son decided to label his father as crazy and reject his own decision to take his father’s place in the boat. So when people label things as crazy, it takes time for them to decide with their