The+Overspill


 * The Big Questions: How does this chapter fit the novel as a whole / Why is it important / What should a good reader take away from this chapter?**

This section tells the story of Jess helping his father clear a garden and build a footbridge to surprise/please Jess' mother while she is away visiting Jess' Uncle Luden in California. When a release of water from a Challenger Paper company reservoir washes away the bridge, the family is still brought closer through the experience. Most of the story is told in straightforward terms, but the the chapter ends on a surreal note, using the image of an expanding tear as a symbol for the family's love for each other. (Meyer)

A good reader should understand the metaphor created by the tear. That is the first impression of the books abstract approaches to complex emotions, including life and love. The tear prepares you to know that not everything described is exact reality. It allows the author to describe his memories to their fullest potential, even even to someone thirty years later. This chapter is important because it is your first impression of the family and you establish their characters in a loving atmosphere. (Harralson / Klein)


 * Important Quotes (and commentary)**

//"Despite the extra chores, I found it exciting. Our friendship took a new and stronger turn, became something of a mild conspiracy. New sets of signals evolved between us. We met now on freshly neutral ground somewhere between my boyhood and his boyishness, and for me it was a heady rise in status. We were clumsy housekeepers, there were lots of minor mishaps, and the tag-line we formulated soonest was: 'Let's just not tell Mama about this one.' I adored that thought."//

> "//She looked where he pointed and as I watched understanding came in to her face little by little when she turned again to face she looked as if she were in pain. a single tear glisten on her cheek, silver in the cheerful light of mid-afternoon. My father dropped his hand and the ribbon fluttered and trailed in the mud. The tear on my mothers cheek got larger and larger, it detached from her face and became a shiny globe widening outward like an inflating balloon, at first the tear floated in the air between them but as it expanded it took my mother and father into itself. I saw them suspended, separate but beginning to drift slowly toward one another. Then my mother looked past my fathers shoulder, looked through the bright skin of the tear, at me. The tear enlarged until at last it took me in to. It was warm and salt. As soon as i got used to the strange light inside the tear, I began to swim clumsily toward my parents."//
 * This passage establishes Joe Robert's childish nature as well as Jess' longing to share his father's world. Jess relishes the opportunity to be something of an equal with his father for perhaps the first time. (Meyer)


 * Within this passage we get an idea of what his familial love is expressed as in Jess' mind. He is very close to his family and older Jess lets us into his personal mind and thoughts.
 * His mother is overcome with emotion when she comes home and sees how much effort and care went into a gift for her. She knew there was so much love expressed through the gift and it overpowered her to tears. She is ambivalent with her feelings of appreciation and sadness that the bridge got destroyed, but she knows that the bridge was only a metaphor to their love which can never be destroyed. (Harralson/Klein)


 * Moments of astonishingly good writing**

//"We struggled heroically. I remember pleasantly the destruction of the vines and the cutting of the drainage ditch neat and straight into the field. The ground was so soft that we could slice down with our spades and bring up squares of dark blue mud and lay them along side by side. They gleamed like tile. Three long afternoons completed the ditch, and then my father brought out the big awkward shoulder scythe and whetted the blade until I could hear it sing on his thumb-ball when he tested it. And then he waded into the thicket of thorny vine and began slashing. For a long time, nothing happened, but finally the vines began to fall back, rolling up in tangles like barbarous handwriting. With a pitchfork I worried these tangles into a heap. Best of all was the firing, the clear yellow flame and the sizzle and snap of the vine-ribs and thorns, and the thin green smoke rising above the new-green willows. The delicious smell of it."//
 * Besides containing one of my all-time favorite similes, this passage sings with sensory details--sights, smells, sounds, feelings and textures. Terrific descriptive writing. (Meyer)