Memory and the Past

The role of memory in the characters' lives, and the loss of the world's names and stories.

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The Man's Childhood

The Perfect Day The Lake He remembers a day at the lake with his uncle. They rowed out, dragged a stump, and returned in the evening. No one spoke. It was the perfect day of his childhood. The Memory This day is the one to shape the days upon. It is a touchstone of beauty in a world of ashes. The Loss He cannot remember the scent of his wife. He tries to hold onto memories, but they fade. The world is shrinking.

The Names of Things

The Forgetting The World Shrinking The man feels the world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly follow those things into oblivion. Colors, the names of birds, things to eat. Finally the names of things one believed to be true. The Sacred Idiom 'The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality.' The language itself is dying. The Boy's Questions The boy asks about crows, about Mars. The man answers, but the boy knows that those things are only in books. The past is gone.

The Stories

The Fiction The Man's Stories The man tells the boy old stories of courage and justice. But later, the boy says those stories are not true. In the stories, they help people, but in reality, they don't. The Boy's Critique The boy says the man only tells happy stories. The man says real life is bad. The boy accepts that the stories are lies, but they are necessary. The Final Story The story of the brook trout is the last story. It is a memory of a world that was real. The boy will remember it.

early in the journey, flashback

mid-journey

throughout the journey