All over but the Shoutin

Brett Crowe

Professor Counts

Composition II

March 4, 2015

Rick Bragg’s memoir, All Over but the Shoutin, entails the story of his entire life. He shows readers the hardships he struggled through to become the writer he is today. Bragg begins his memoir by describing a memory of a red bird “attacking its own reflection in the side mirror of a truck.” Bragg says “It was as if the bird hated what it saw there, and discovered too late that all it was seeing was itself.” Rick’s father can be summed up as “an abusive alcoholic veteran of the Korean War”(259) and many of his characteristics can be seen in this red bird. To begin, the beauty of the red bird represents the potential Charles had to be the perfect father figure his family always needed. Second, the self-destructive behavior of the bird fighting itself symbolizes internal conflict Charles struggled with after the war. Finally, the way Bragg describes the bird coming to the realization too late, is reflective of the way Charles tried to make amends with Bragg right before his own death.

To begin, Bragg’s father possessed the potential to be the husband and father his family deserved. Bragg describes two older photos of his father as “fresh-faced and fearless” (77). With this, Bragg is showing readers, and maybe even trying to convince himself, that his father wasn’t always an alcoholic and he really had what it takes to be a family man. Time and time again we see Charles trying to make it work with his family, but he would fail and return to his old ways. When Bragg’s mother married Charles he was different, he was what a family needed, but something changed him. He turned to alcohol and could never reach the full beauty the red bird symbolized.

Second, the imagery of the red bird fighting itself is a connection with the internal conflicts Charles was going through. Charles served in the war and returned as a different man than who he was when he left. He most likely suffered from some form of...