Crossing by Mark Slouka

Crossing
The short story, ‘Crossing’, is written by Mark Slouka in 2009, and takes up father and son relationship together with man vs. nature. From the beginning of time fathers have taken their sons on camping trips or similar to pass on their knowledge about how to conquer Mother Nature. But more important it binds them closer together, and this is exactly these two purposes the father here wishes to obtain.

Through a third person limited narrator the reader is presented to a father who has a hard time in life after a divorce from his wife.

Therefore he is now determined to find something that matters and has set his heart on maintaining a strong and sound relationship to his young son, ‘when he looked at her she shook her head and looked away and at that moment he thought, maybe – maybe he could make this right’(19-20). He believes that they can bond through male-things, things the son cannot do with his mother.

By choosing something he himself did with his father he makes it more ritually and secret, it is something only father and son share.

As the narrator only knows what the main character, the father, thinks, feels and recalls, it is naturally told from his point of view. We get glimpse of the things that he struggles with, ‘he hadn’t been happy in a while’ (5). By using this narrative technique Slouka brings us closer to the father, and the readers feel and experience his pain first-hand, consequently the readers also want him to succeed. Because of the limited narrator there is no insight or access to the son’s mind, instead the author uses physical descriptions through the father’s eyes, who pictures him as a small and fragile boy he has to protect, ‘he looked over at the miniature jeans, the sweatshirt bunched beneath the seat belt’s strap, the hiking boots dangling off the floor like weights. “You okay?”’ (7-8).