A River Runs Through It - Father Love

Teaching, it’s an art unto itself. An art more common than not that is ill reputed by the “students” that need enlightenment. So much in fact, the country itself has been diminished in quality of education and information retainment its children in pre-secondary education. A fact that does hold true though, is the uncanny ability for a parent to teach a child (Father to Son), and for the child to cling to the gathered ideas for improvement though his or her life. I feel as if the somewhat cult followed book A River Runs Through It best shows this though its metaphorical implications involving the father teaching the two sons (Norman and Paul); not only does he teach the children how to cast a fly, read waters, and catch fish, he uses the time (in his life and on the Blackfoot) to teach them of God, life, and living, in contrast to the modern family, often fatherless. It truly represents something very ideal to us Americans, having a father who is idolized, fishin’ on the river with pa’, learnin’ more than just fishin’, but about life. Early in the book we learn that the father of the two boys relative to modern times is a very traditional Presbyterian minister who interjects as well as teaches God very much to his broods. In fact on right at the beginning, “In our family there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing… His chief way of recharging himself was to recite to us from the sermon that was coming, enriched here and there with selections from the most successful passages of his morning sermon. Even so, in a typical week of our childhood Paul and I probably received as many hours of instruction in fly fishing as we did in all other spiritual matters. (MacLean 1 &2)
Right away we see a man who, by nature of career choice is pre-determined to teach and enlighten others, and what better test subjects than his children? In the following paragraph we see another key aspect of any good mentor, the ability to teach by letting the learners know

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