Do you believe in forgiveness? In church we are taught that forgiveness is one of the most important things if you are a Catholic. But if someone came to your house and broke your windows, what would you do? I bet most of you answered that you would go to their house and break their windows or call the police. Most people would do that but then they would go to church on Sunday and call themselves a Catholic. They are wrong. By breaking the windows they had revenge and revenge is not forgiveness. So if they had gotten revenge they could no longer call themselves a true Catholic. But revenge has become so normal that no one thinks about it before they do it. We would all not be Catholics but God has forgiven us. In the book, “Peace Like a River” I learned that forgiveness is always the best choice and revenge can lead us to consequences.
In the book Reuben’s family is faced with a problem, that his brother wants to deal with one way and his dad another way. His dad wants to forgive them and when his son asks him what they are going to do about it he replies “Nothing, what the fellows don’t realize is we have already won. The victory is ours.” He means that they are going to be the bigger person and forgive them and not make revenge. While his dad handles it his way Reuben’s brother, Davy, is handling it another way. He decides to get revenge and in the process he ends up killing two boys. This is what I meant when I said revenge always leads us to consequences. If Davy would have just followed his dad’s example it wouldn’t have happened. Forgiveness makes us the bigger person and we are following the Catholic way.
The plot of the book leads me to believing the mode of the novel. The mode was definitely irony. A few examples were Reuben was born not breathing, another one was when Davy shot the two boys the police cars showed up right away but the cars weren’t there when the boys attacked Swede. Throughout the book it just had an ironic feel .In the whole book the characters were trying to fight someone or run from something. Like in the beginning when they were fighting against Tommy and Israel and when Davy was running from the cops. Symbolism also helped me figure out the mode. One really important symbol was Jeremiah Lands blew life and air into his son who was described as a clay baby. This reminded me of God who made Adam a clay man then blew air into him. The symbols and mode was strong throughout the book and was easy to figure out.
The author of, “Peace Like a River” is Leif Enger. He wrote “Peace Like a River” in an unique way. He wrote it as a flashback. The narrator, Reuben, was telling what happened as a flashback. He also included lots of poems. The style of writing was fiction. He wrote a reader-friendly book about a Minnesota family in 1962. The message he was trying to get out is forgiveness is always the best choice and you can’t always get revenge.
“Peace Like a River” is a book full of decisions. The decisions make them who they are and they decide what happens next in the book. In the book they have to decide if they will get revenge or if they will be the bigger person and forgive.
