Philip+KM

I found this reading, by Terrie Philip, entitled “River of Paradox: John McPhee’s “The Encircled River’” interesting and enjoyable because I had the opportunity to read part one of “The Encircled River”, so it was nice to be able to read from another viewpoint. Throughout the beginning of this reading, Philip discusses the vast range of topics McPhee chooses to write about, and explaining how well he goes about doing this, stating that “reviewers have universally praised the dazzling virtuosity of his style, his facility with detail and characterization, and his ability to make the ostensibly trivial enormously interesting” (Philip, 3). He also expresses that McPhee’s work feels like a novel published in between magazine articles and advertisements.

What Philip is focusing on, however, is McPhee’s interest in Nature; this being the major theme throughout “The Encircled River”. Specifically within the theme of Nature, Philip is describing how McPhee interprets life cycles. Philip explores how McPhee ties in the idea of life cycles through his use of a red bandanna mentioned at the beginning of the article and only brought up again at the very end of the article. It is a very interesting theory that Philip describes throughout his article, something I never would have picked up on through my own reading.

Philip goes on to explore more metaphors throughout the article like the grizzly bear, which he states “hovers over the narrative like a bad dream and symbolizes the almost overwhelming significance of death in nature’s cycles”(7). He then goes on to explain how the representation of the grizzly bear in McPhee’s article represents the white man in the sense that we come into this environment (Alaska) and kill. Yet, we do not kill as the grizzly bear does; we kill the forest and the landscape.

He then explains McPhee’s devotion to the preservation of the landscape, not only in Alaska, but for everywhere in the world. He understands that something must be done in an attempt to keep what is left. In the case of “The Encircled River”, it is the Salmon in the river. The Salmon provide a key element to the circle of life that was described earlier and their habitat and populations are dwindling.

It is an interesting read, the metaphors Philip discusses are kind of confusing at first, especially when you have not read the articles he is discussing so in-depth so it is easy to get lost. However, I still believe it is a good article, worth reading.

Katelyn Mokler