Hi. Charlie Palmer here.

The “River of Names” delivers a very powerful punch using very blunt language in an effective order. The story is compiled of many sections, either describing violence in the narrator’s past or the effects on her present relationship. The flashback sections, especially at the start of the story, follow a similar pattern: neutral statements followed by alarming images of violence. The readers are not surprised by the image of sisters chasing chickens into a barn, but are shocked by the image of a child hanging from the rafters (3). Similarly, the readers are not impacted by hearing that the narrator “was born between the older cousins and the younger” but are horrified when the next few sentences describe screaming and a cousin “[bringing] bloody rags out to be burned” (4). The author uses a technique of contrasting statements to both show the normalcy of violence to the family—tragically, it is built into the to everyday life—but also to seduce the readers into believing there is a lull in the violence before horrifying them again.

Further on in the story, the descriptions of violence become a list of brief explanations. The narrator briefly identifies—not always by name—a relation who died and how they supposedly died. She adds that “No one said why” or “they never told anyone else what had happened to Bo” (8) or “Nobody really wanted answers” (9). The impersonal, brusque way in which she describes deaths creates the same effect—taking away the stories of her family until they are only victims. She contrasts this with detailed images of tenderness—placing “I watched for a long time while she sleeps, warm and still against me” before “James went blind. One of the uncles got him in the face with home-brewed alcohol” (7) and “[I] take my infinity fragile nephew and hold him, rocking him, rocking myself” before “One night I came home to screaming” (11). Thus, the violence dehumanizes the people and the tenderness becomes more real, more full, showing the reader just how much violence destroyed the humanity of the narrator’s family.