Blog #1: Reading Fiction Closely

The Bright Forever By Lee Martin Innocence Crossing the Threshold "Raymond R. crossed the White River. Fog was starting to settle in the low-lying bottom land. The truck crested a hill, and as it nosed down the other side, he could see in the headlight beams the smoky swirls of fog, and for a moment, his head electric with LSD, he imagined he was flying over the tops of the clouds. Then Katie said,"It's almost dark." He remembered her then, the girl. "Dark ain't nothing to be afraid of," he said. "You're a big girl ain't you?" He could swear she was shrinking. Each time he glanced at her, she seemed farther away from him. Finally, she was so small he thought he could pick her up and s tick her in his pocket. Like Tom Thumb, he thought. That was a story he'd always liked. Tom Thumb hidden away in places too small and tight for ordinary folks to go: a mouse's hole, a snail's shell. Tom Thumb swallowed up by a cow and then rescued, only to be eaten by a wolf. Tom Thumb always trying to tell people where he was." (Martin,206) "Wheee!" He was laughing . "Wheee!" he said again. They were gliding through the fog, and for a good while there was only the sound of the truck's tires bumping over the seams in the pavement and the rush of the wind coming in through the open windows. Raymond R. turned off the highway onto a gravel road. He drove another mile north and then found the old shale road that snaked back into heavy woods, the road he had seen through his binoculars the evening he and Clare had driven to Honeywell. In the woods, all the light went out, and there they were in the dark. The road was narrow and sapling branches whipped up against the fenders and doors, squeaking as they scraped over the paint. The truck tires sank down into the muck of mud and shale. The air smelled of wet, moldering leaves. Trees rose up in the headlight beams, thick trunks laced with wild grapevine. Somewhere in the woods a screech owl screamed" (Martin, 208). The theme that I chose for The Bright Forever is innocence because the whole book revolves around finding out what happened to Katie and who did it. The opening line to the novel is "I'm not saying I didn't do it. I don't know," this quote comes from Raymond R., and I chose it in support of my theme because it appears that Ray is not entirely innocent but he's also not entirely guilty and this quote was a good example of that. Another quote that contributes to the theme of innocence is "Did I think that Raymond R. might hurt Katie? I spent the rest of the evening convincing myself it couldn't be so," this was said by Henry Dees and it's a good example because it shows you how Dees was trying to prove his own innocence to himself, he was trying to reassure himself. The passage that I chose reflected the theme of the novel because in the passage I chose it illustrates Ray with Katie and what exactly went down the night that Katie went missing, it also solidifies Mr. Dees' innocence which for me was in question throughout the whole book until that point when it was confirmed that Ray had killed her.