Only the Strong Die: The Faults of Masculinity in Maclean’s
A River Runs Through It
by Michael P. Moran
In an interview with TriQuarterly in 1984, Norman Maclean recalled the battle over his
masculinity as a child. He explained, “She [his mother] and my father fought for my soul when I
was a young man, my father wanting me to be a tough guy and my mother wanting me to be a
flower girl. So I ended up being a tough flower girl.” If determining masculinity and femininity
were as easy as turning a human over on its back and checking reproductive organs,
psychologists, doctors, and professors would not spend so many hours drawing the parameters
around the terms or analyzing the language and expectations associated with each. In Maclean’s
A River Runs Through It, the narrator, Norman, defines masculinity through his descriptions of
the natural world and the language and silence utilized by his three central male characters: Neal,
Norman, and Paul. While Norman’s laudatory approval of Paul’s masculinity emerges in many
of the natural descriptions, Norman actually champions the balanced nature of man, the one
capable of both silence and expression, the “tough flower girl” who survives and blesses a short
life with immortality.
To best analyze Maclean’s concept of the doomed masculine, it is best to start where
masculinity’s absence swells into an embarrassing void for both Paul and Norman, and that is
with Neal. According to psychotherapist Terrence Real, “boys and men...when asked to describe
masculinity, predominantly responded with double negatives...not being weak...not being
dependent...in short...not being a woman” (130). To define masculinity by what a man is not,
Neal is not Paul, neither is he Norman, nor is he Kenny. Neal, though he travels from the West
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back to Montana, unburdens himself on the women of his life. When Neal alights from the train,
Norman details Neal’s suitcase—“its straw sides had started to break open and one of its locks
did not lock. Between its handles were the initials F.M., his mother’s initials before she had
married” (30). Neal may have traveled on his own, but his mother’s suitcase carries his
belongings, the weight in his life, his burdens for him. After Paul and Norman refuse Florence’s
excuses for Neal, the hungover traveler rests on a mattress in the bed’s truck while his mother,
sister, and sister-in-law tend to his sickness, as if the truck were “the intensive care unit” (35).
After Neal’s blistering sunburn, the same triage crew applies ointment without scolding the
drunken lobster suffering before them (78). If Neal cannot separate from his mother’s nurturing,
then he cannot achieve masculinity, even if he engages in typical masculine activities.
Neal’s relationship with Old Rawhide displays initial signs of masculinity. In
“Rethinking Power and Solidarity in Gender and Dominance,” Deborah Tannen draws a clear
line between the powerful and the powerless: “powerful people do the talking and powerless
people are silenced...men dominate women by silencing them.” While at Black Jack’s, Neal
weaves elaborate tales filled with filler, with lies not aimed at impressing anyone, just so he
could talk, and in his wind-bag deflation, he plays the man. Norman explains, “Neal’s opening
ploy with women was to ignore them” (33). In this situation, Neal plays the masculine role,
“doing all the talking and none of the listening” (33). Aloof, boisterous, confident (even if
feigned)—Neal feels man enough, receiving Rawhide’s lustful glare, capturing, what he thinks,
is Long Bow’s ear. In the civilized world, the world of steel and concrete, the world inhabited
by most of the characters in the novella, Neal passes as somewhat masculine, but when
introduced to Paul and Norman’s world, the outdoors, the river, the sun, Neal fails the initiation
by breaking the masculine code.
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Weinberger identifies the code as a family code, as the Maclean fishing code handed
down from father to sons, a code that transforms fishing to a religious experience. According to
Weinberger, the code reads like a tablet of abridged and specialized commandments, including
observing a moment of silence, referring to the rod as a rod and not a pole, following the fourstep casting motion, not drinking (hard liquor) while fishing. While Weinberger correctly
identifies these codes, he scratches at another code: no women. Since the women, the sisters and
mothers, stay home and only the boys fish the river and the holes, the fishing is more than a
religious experience. It serves as a bonding experience for these men; therefore, the codes gently
enforced are men’s codes, codes Neal breaks by bringing Rawhide, a bottle of 3-7-77, and no rod
(56). “Fishing is also an indication of virility, and handling a rod well is important in more than
one sense” (Lojek). Since Neal arrives sans rod, without the eight-plus-foot phallic caster, what
does it reveal about his masculinity? Unprepared to fish, Neal can only drink and let his worms
bake and shrivel in his coffee can, a man in body and voice, but not masculine in action, as
Rawhide proves in her language toward and treatment of Neal.
The way adults address each other reveals their power status in a given relationship. Old
Rawhide, then, through her words and actions, emasculates Neal. Deborah Tannen, in her
linguistic writings, analyzes the significance of a first name in encounters. She elaborates,
“Ways of talking to children—calling them by first name, patting and caressing them, asking
them personal questions—show affection. But they also reflect a difference in status” (That’s
Not 103). During Neal’s first interaction with Old Rawhide, she calls out to him, “Hey, Buster”
(33); Buster may serve as a name for this moment since the drunken weathered woman feels
fueled by booze and anger and wants to get Neal’s attention, but at the fishing trip, as the two
stumble from the car, Rawhide informs Norman, “I’ve brought Buster to go fishing with you”
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(53). Aside from the two men whose initials mark her ass, Rawhide calls every man Buster. In
renaming them, she takes authority over them. After Neal burns to an unpleasant shade of scarlet,
rather than accept assistance from Paul or Norman, a more acceptable option, Neal turns to
Rawhide for her help. He depends on women, and she takes the position and him, declaring,
“He’s my man” (69). He is a man, but her ownership over him emasculates him further. In fact,
in Paul’s eyes, he sees no difference between the weathered whore and the poor excuse for a man.
Paul refers to the mass of sunburnt flesh as “It,” lumping man into woman, two entities into one
(66). Together they do not form the perfect human being. Together they are feminine and
therefore, in Paul’s eyes, flawed. From the novella’s beginning pages, Paul dismisses Neal as a
semblance of a man, stating, “He’ll be just as welcome as a dose of clap” (9). Since Paul does
not engage in homosexual activities, he would only refer to sexual intercourse with a woman. To
Paul, Neal equates to less than a woman: Neal is the venereal disease contracted from a woman.
Neal’s position in the wilderness also illustrates his lack of masculinity. Norman
describes the location where Neal passes out as “where below the river forked with a sandbar in
between” (65), and, when Paul and Norman approach the two unconscious fornicators, he says,
“we had come to an uneasy stop, like animals approaching a waterhole and seeing something in
the water where they were going to drink” (66). Under these conditions, Neal sticks out as an
oddity in the otherwise idyllic setting. Paul, more than Norman, wades in the water, dives in the
water, lets the waters swallow him up to his chest. For the Maclean brothers, masculinity
includes charging, conquering, or working the river’s flow. Paul, after leaping into the river and
climbing out, is described as “hydraulic,” as if his clothes “were running off him” (20). Neal,
conversely, remains out of the water, on the dry sand, burning. As Lojek admits, and as Florence
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should admit, “There is no chance Montana can make a man of Neal,” mainly because where he
should immerse himself, he excludes himself.
If Neal represents the effeminate man, with his tennis sweaters and his mother’s luggage,
then Norman casts Paul as the epitome of masculine. While Neal drunkenly slumbers beneath
the sun on sand, Paul, by contrast, remains active in nature, one with nature. In Norman’s
description of Paul’s casting, Paul nearly disappears into the natural world:
Then he steadied himself and began to cast and the whole world turned to water...The
mini-molecules of water left in the wake of his line made momentary loops of gossamer,
disappearing so rapidly in the rising big-grained vapor that they had to be retained in
memory to be visualized as loops. The spray emanating from him was finer-grained still
and enclosed him in a halo of himself. The halo of himself was always there and always
disappearing, as if he were candlelight flickering about three inches from himself. The
images of himself and his line kept disappearing...they became rays of the sun.(20)
Norman throughout the novella bluntly states he does not like Neal, and that dislike may
contribute to the effeminate portrayal, but Norman lauds Paul’s presence. Paul, in a single action,
transforms into water and fire, the mist that makes him glow to the point that Norman sees him
as the sun, the center for warmth, light, and life. Even Paul and Norman’s actions after
discovering Neal and Rawhide drank their beers display masculinity. “Suddenly we turned and
came out of the water with a roar, like two animals as they finish fording a river, making jumps
when the water gets shallower and bringing waves to shore long after they get there” (65).
Compared to Neal’s passive nude sun-baking, Paul and Norman’s raging movements equate to
“dominance aggression...an aggressive display...distinguished from other forms of aggression
precisely by the absence of violence” (Real 117). Obviously Paul would rather direct his rage
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toward the gullet that swallowed his beer, but since Neal is Norman’s brother-in-law and
Florence’s son, Paul requires a release for his aggression.
Action alone does not constitute masculinity; Paul’s masculinity surfaces in his actions
based on competition. Block, in studying how parents rear boys and girls differently, concluded
“both mothers and fathers stressed achievement and competition in their sons” (Real 122). Even
as a child, confident in his fishing skills, Paul would fume, “I would like to get him for a day’s
fishing on the Big Blackfoot—with a bet on the side” (5). Deborah Tannen, in “The Power of
Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why,” identifies men as consistently seeking the “one-up” position.
Paul’s early boasting, then, supports this masculine trait, as do his efforts in fighting, gambling,
and fishing. Norman establishes the Maclean brother’s fight code—“if it looks like a fight is
coming, get in the first punch” (8). Macleans, one up. Paul returns to the poker game at Hot
Springs to rally against his current “one-down” (or possibly thousands down) position (23). And,
while Paul demonstrates excellent fishing skills, “One reason Paul caught more fish than anyone
else was that he had his flies in the water more than anyone else” (36). Consistently Paul fishes
to his limit, and when Norman proves notable as a fisherman, Paul’s competitive nature proves
uncontrollable. “It didn’t happen often in his life, only when his fishing partner was catching
fish and he couldn’t...So he would spoil his partner’s hole, even if it was his brother’s” (89). As
with many displays of masculinity, Paul learns this competitive spirit from his father who, later
in the novella, hurls a rock into Paul’s watering hole (96). A competitive spirit defines the
masculine man in both the natural environment and the civilized world.
Fighting contributes only partially to Paul’s masculine lifestyle, yet fighting and physical
power earn him his father’s undying honor. Maclean admits about his father in a 1984 interview,
“If it didn’t get too rough, he liked it...he’d say, ‘How did you come off last night?’ And if I said,
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‘Well, I won,’ he would say, ‘Good, take it easy—sleep it off.’ But if I said, ‘Well, I lost,’ it’d
be, ‘Get out of bed and over to church! Shame on you!’” The father established physical
toughness as a sign of masculinity; therefore, Paul’s victories affirm his position as masculine.
When Paul pounds the jokester who disrespects Mo-nah-se-tah, Paul does so appropriately, by
his understanding of masculine behavior (24). It is a pattern supported by his father and
encouraged by his woman “who always felt that she had a disappointing evening and had not
been appreciated if the guy who took her out didn’t get into a big fight over her” (26). Clearly,
family and the physical Montana society expect violence in determining masculinity, so much so
that following Paul’s death, the father can only ask, “Are you sure that the bones in his hand
were broken” (102). He finds solace only in knowing that Paul died fighting, died like a man, as
Old Siward in Macbeth felt comfort in knowing when his son fell under the tyrant’s blade the
boy’s wounds “were on the front.” Masculinity to the death is valued more than an effeminate
long life.
Ultimately, Paul meets his demise because of his masculinity. As Weinberger puts it,
“There is the world on the river and there is the world off the river.” Bears, rapids, deep pools,
muddy roads, sizable fish—these Paul can master, but “the greatest dangers in life lie not in the
power and vagaries of nature...but in the ugliness of society which—if they do not flee it—will
first corrupt and then destroy them” (Lojek). Real cautions, “Rigid notions of masculinity, far
from being a necessary component of good psychological adjustment, may be a negative factor”
(132). Paul consumes alcohol in nature and in town; in nature he enjoys the open sky, yet in
town the drinking lands him in jail. Paul’s competitive spirit flares when his brother does well
on the river, and all involved have a laugh, yet that same competitive nature, when displayed and
trumped at a poker table, invites confrontation with thugs and killers. Paul’s aggression toward a
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nude Rawhide on the sandbank carries humorous undertones, yet that same aggression breaks
Paul’s hand and pummels his head with the butt of a gun. The purely masculine man can thrive
in nature, but in society, by his own code, he dies.
Norman comments early in the novella, “one of the earliest things brothers try to find out
is how they differ from each other,” and for Norman, those differences, while walking the
canyon between masculine and feminine, save him in the end. Fishing, as Browning identifies it,
“serves as a parallel system of communication.” The Maclean brothers, through their fishing,
can communicate, Paul in his masculine way and Norman in his “tough flower girl” way, but
with most of their fishing experience, they say nothing. Maclean writes that as they drive toward
the river, “we sat silently respectful until we passed the big Divide” (13). For these two brothers,
they are comfortable in this silence, especially the silence that rings with respect for their
environment. Tannen, in Perspectives on Silence, states “silence can be used to fulfill the
functions of most speech acts as well as larger discourse functions, such as prayers” (xiii). Since
in the Maclean family “there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing” (1), this silence
solemnizes their future actions on the river, but future silences and omissions interfere with
Paul’s need for help.
Neal has no qualms telling his mother he does not feel well enough to fish, but Paul is too
masculine to admit weakness. Paul, after a night of drinking, wakes up early to cook breakfast,
and Norman notices the redness bulging from Paul’s eyes (82). In her analysis on indirectness,
Tannen writes, “men are especially likely to be indirect when it comes to admitting fault or
weakness” (“The Power of Talk”). In the Maclean interview, the author posits “most people try
to cover up their feelings about the despair they are going through.” For Paul, this is the case.
While exiting the jail cell with Paul, Norman notices his brother’s “overdeveloped right wrist
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held his right hand over his eyes so that in some drunken way he thought I could not see him and
he may also have thought that he could not see himself” (27). Fighting leads to triumph; getting
arrested brings no pride, but it also brings no shame if Paul cannot admit his fault. Paul does not
frankly admit why he had to pay to fix the front of his car, he does not confess to Norman that
excessive drinking and reckless driving caused him to smash his front end; instead he tells a tale,
one rich and entertaining, alluring to any nature lover, about a “phosphorescent jackrabbit”
keeping him company on a moonlit ride (14). When Norman offers Paul financial assistance to
help with the arrears, Paul resorts to silence. “He bowed his head in silence until he was sure I
wouldn’t say anything more” (45). Lojek characterizes Paul’s masculinity as one consistent with
the mythical American West, as one of many “tight-lipped, powerful, independent loners
governed by a ‘code’ of fair but assertive behavior.” He will not ask for help since help renders
one dependent, and dependence, as seen with Neal, reeks of weakness. At most, Paul can say,
about Norman, but implying himself, “maybe what he likes is somebody trying to help him”
before attempting to throw an arm around Norman, “but his fish basket with big tails sticking out
of it” got between them. Paul’s resistance to assistance extends so far as to turn down Norman’s
offer of a Bunyan Bug. As Norman notes shortly after, with the river raging between them,
drowning their voices with its rush, a symbol of both unity and disconnect, “when things got
tough, my brother looked to himself to get himself out of trouble” (90). The two men have their
brotherly, masculine communication, but at times Paul’s established masculinity interferes with
his communicative skills.
Norman, while he loves his brother and tries to emulate his brother in his fishing style
and ability, is not his brother. After realizing the stress in his wife’s home acted like a wedge
between him and his wife, Norman immediately calls Paul for help, asking if they could escape
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to the family cabin (51). Norman does not fear accepting help from his brother, nor does he
harbor shame when he communicates in typical feminine tendencies. “Women tend to say I’m
sorry more frequently than men...but people who utter frequent apologies may end up appearing
weaker, less confident, and literally more blameworthy than people who don’t” (Tannen “The
Power of Talk”). Ten pages into the novella, Norman says, “I’m sorry, Paul, but it’s too early in
the morning for me to start drinking” and after Neal and Rawhide steal the beer, again Norman
says, “Paul, I’m sorry. I wish I knew how to stay away from this guy” (65). Paul, like Norman,
offers assistance (in the form of fishing advice), but Paul never utters the words admitting fault.
Norman says, “Maybe he was sorry he had spoken, but, having said what he said, he had to say
something more” (16), and that something more enforces the original advice. But the Maclean
brothers’ language differences extend beyond I’m sorry and fault admittance. Norman also
adopts the feminine persona with the compliments he pays his brother. Florence knows to
compliment fishermen by looking in their baskets and saying, “My, my” (11), and the entire
novella, aside from a few streaks of humanity, convey a homage to Paul and his artistry, as if the
brother were a demigod sent to earth to fish for thirty odd years and leave the world better for his
brief presence. Tannen attributes compliments to the feminine, saying, “women pay more
compliments than men [since] boys are indeed looking for opportunities to put others down and
take the one-up position for themselves” (“The Power of Talk). Even when Norman succeeds by
landing a large fish, Paul musters a tip of the hat, not to Norman, but to the worthy fish (19).
Norman’s ability to weave between the masculine and the feminine, to wade and succeed in the
natural world and function within the restrictions of society, grants him life and happiness,
especially when considering how he interacts with women.
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Lojek makes the claim that “like every western hero before them, Maclean and his
brother prefer a world without women.” Paul absolutely prefers the masculine world, the
outdoor world where man can wander down a river in silence. Though Paul likes and
appreciates Jessie and Florence, he wonders why Norman had “gone off and got married” (9).
After Neal receives second-degree burns over his delicate rear, Paul responds to Jessie’s scolding
with one word: “No” (74). Afterward he slips out of the house leaving Norman to deal with the
women. Though Paul makes his career with words as a reporter, his work requires little human
interaction. Maclean describes Bill Campbell, editor for Paul’s Helena paper, as a “famous
tough son of a bitch, a great vitriolic writer who specialized in castrating the members of the
Helena congregation” (“The Two Worlds”). Paul’s writing was a solitary action, combative in
nature, but shared only with his editor. Norman, also a writer, uses his writing differently. “The
act of writing allows Maclean to acknowledge the spiritual and emotional pain that he carried for
nearly forty years after his brother’s death” (Womack). Norman’s conciliatory communicative
abilities emerge in the same scene Paul evades. Florence, Dotty, and Jessie, the three women, all
visit Norman before he leaves, offering peace and understanding. Norman spends the book’s
length attempting to communicate with Paul and failing at his various attempts, failing to
understand his brother and his brother’s stories, but in one line shared with his wife, “Let’s never
get out of touch with each other,” an existing bond solidifies until death. “It is a scene involving
mutual respect, love, and support which crosses gender barriers. It is also a scene in which it is
impossible to imagine Paul” (Lojek). The natural world sucks the moisture out of Neal, yet
leaves him softer than ever, and the social world proves too hard for Paul’s masculinity to crack.
The only one to navigate both is Norman, and the words Maclean’s father discusses at the book’s
end reveal why.
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The father, sitting on the high bank, tells Norman, “In the part I was reading it says the
Word was in the beginning, and that’s right. I used to think water was first, but if you listen
carefully you will hear that the words are underneath the water” (95). Norman discusses
“reading the river” earlier in the work, and one can only read the written text. In the Maclean
story, Norman and Paul possess those powers of the written word; therefore, written text is
masculine. The women (Florence, Dotty, and Jessie), chastise, comfort, reconcile with their
spoken words. If silence throughout is masculine, then oral response is feminine. What then is
the river? The words are underneath the water, and those waters gurgle, echo, thunder over the
voice of man. The river represents the masculine and the feminine, and Norman, the balanced
man, the man who can fish until satisfied without hitting his limit, traverses the waters and then
sits on the bank. He can enter the river, become one with the river, one with the natural setting,
and then remove himself from it. In the often quoted closing lines, Maclean writes, “Eventually,
all things merge into one, and a river runs through it” (104), and though the line reflects
linguistic ambiguity, two things, masculinity and femininity, must merge into one to live in a
world consisting of both.
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Works Cited
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it." Christianity and Literature 50.4 (Summer 2001): 679-688. Rpt. in Short Story
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Center. Web. 2 Apr. 2012.
Butler, Douglas R. "Norman Maclean's A River Runs through It: Word, Water, and Text."
Critique 33.4 (Summer 1992): 263-273. Rpt. in Short Story Criticism. Ed. Jelena O.
Krstovic. Vol. 136. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Apr. 2012.
Lojek, Helen. "Casting Flies and Recasting Myths with Norman Maclean." Western American
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Krstovic. Vol. 136. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Literature Resource Center. Web. 3 Apr. 2012.
MacLean, Norman. A River Runs Through It. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001.
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---, Annick Smith, and William Kittredge. "The Two Worlds of Norman Maclean: Interviews in
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Real, Terrence. I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male
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Tannen Ph.D., Deborah. "Gender and Family Interaction." Handbook on Language and Gender,
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---. “Introduction," Gender and Conversational Interaction, ed. by Deborah Tannen, 3-13. New
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---"Introduction." Perspectives on Silence, ed. by Deborah Tannen and Muriel Saville-Troike.
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---. "Rethinking Power and Solidarity in Gender and Dominance." Proceedings of the 16th
Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, ed. by Kira Hall, Jean-Pierre Koenig,
Michael Meacham, Sondra Reinman, and Laurel A. Sutton, 519-29. Berkeley: Berkeley
Linguistics Society, 1990. Web. 30 March 2012.
---."The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why." Harvard Business Review 73 (1995):5.
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---.That’s not What I Meant!: How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships. New
York: Ballantine Books, 1986. Print.
Womack, Kenneth, and Todd F. Davis. "'Haunted by Waters': Narrative Reconciliation in
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