“RBWTL”

Let me begin by stating that the last week and a half has been spent in a blur.  Whether this is the excuse that I will make for not “reading through the lines” in the book or not, I would be lying to say that I grasped even the subtle metaphor, let alone an overlying theme, when reading Where the Rivers Flow North. Perhaps I will attribute my inattentiveness to a general lack of curiosity.  These excuses do not matter.  What does matter is that when forced to pay attention to visual imagery, such as watching a movie in class, the fact that my brain might not be working properly suddenly is not so important.  By film it was much easier to see the story as a whole, therefore allowing the metaphor to stimulate my foggy head.  While reading, i could pick out themes of work, but these passages seemed to be only what they were at the surface.  In the film, it was made clear that these images of a man working to preserve his home and livelihood not only represent himself, but also what the region as a whole seems to be going through at the moment.  The story is one of change through technological progress, and this change includes that of cultural heritage.  Today we see the Northern Forest pushing to be a self-sustaining economy that works to preserve this cultural heritage, but at the same time barriers are being met in the form of new technologies co-existing with the old.  Perhaps it should have been easy for me to pick this theme out of the book, perhaps not; perhaps this means I should work on my “reading between the lines”.