The River Why

The 1983 novel The River Why melds the genres of bildungsroman and philosophical treatise to create a spiritually rich and emotionally complex story about finding meaning in life. Written by American novelist and essayist David James Duncan, the book borrows from the tradition of first-person explorations of values and ideals like Thoreau’s Walden. Initially, seeming like a quirky coming of age memoir about a young man who loves to fish, the novel pushes the boundaries of this framework, using the protagonist’s experiences as a metaphor, as the young man finds himself fishing for spirituality beyond the confines of institutionalized religion, fishing for connection with the world around him, and fishing for transcendentalism. Duncan mixes a variety of tones to achieve this multi-layered effect: beautiful naturalistic description of the outdoors, metaphysical flights of fancy, and earth-bound humor.

Twenty-year-old Gus Orviston, a young man who has recently graduated from high school, is now casting around for a purpose. Gus has grown up in an eccentric family obsessed with the art and craft of fishing. His father, nicknamed H2O, is a gentlemanly fisherman who swears by fly-fishing, while his Ma, who calls herself a “raucous cowgirl” will only fish with bait – a disagreement in style that fuels their endless bickering, which is soothed only by the quiet calm of Gus’s younger brother, Bill Bob. Gus has a preternatural and precocious ability to fish but believes that he is unable to perfect this skill while under the daily bombardment of his parents’ arguments.

Eager to know exactly how good at fishing he could become, Gus leaves home, moving to a tiny cabin in the foothills of the Pacific Coast Range of mountains. Here, all alone, he can live what he imagines to be an “ideal schedule”: eating when hungry, sleeping when tired, and spending the rest of his time fishing in solitude on the riverbanks of this rural part of Oregon. Because the cabin is hidden by a wild grove of cedar trees, it is clear that nothing and no one will disturb Gus’s hermit-like existence unless he himself wants it to.



At first, this retreat from human connection is exactly what Gus was hoping for: he has time now to spend all of his mental acuity and natural ability to perfect his fishing know-how and develop new techniques. Soon, he starts to notice just how much the natural world around him has been affected by human activity. Even here, in the middle of this seemingly primeval and undisturbed forest, the signs of surrounding civilization stand out to Gus, who has fallen deeply into a sense of religious reverence for Nature.

As he considers what he is seeing, Gus slowly comes to view his solitary pursuit of perfection in fishing as hollow and meaningless – a waste of his humanity. As weeks in the cabin become months, Gus’s isolation stops being an escape, instead, becoming a dark hole that threatens to swallow his wellbeing. He understands that this kind of solitude isn’t independence and freedom, but rather self-inflicted loneliness that is so profound he needs immediate connection to others in order to recover.

This realization is the first step on Gus’s journey towards recovering a sense of himself in relation to others. The next comes when he has the traumatic experience of finding a dead fisherman in the middle of the river. In the process of recovering the body and maneuvering it to shore, Gus sees just how much he craves human touch. Slowly, he makes overtures to the other people who live near him.



One of the people he connects with is Eddy, a young fisherwoman who, filled with her own eccentricities, is, like Gus, an original and brilliant thinker. Their relationship grows and deepens, as the love they eventually share helps Gus see that his life will only have meaning in it when he allows himself to be vulnerable and available to others. In long, meandering conversations, Gus and Eddy explore growing up and maturity, finding a set of values to live by, and the definition of success and achievement.

Eventually, Eddy tests Gus’s new outlook by hooking a tough salmon and then letting Gus try to reel it in. As he fights the powerful fish up the river all night long, he considers what it would mean to lose the fish or to catch it. Does his ability to catch the salmon prove that he can be successful, or are there other ways to approach the idea of success? In the end, Gus reels the salmon in only to let it go back into the water, symbolically giving up his original notions of achievement that have now been replaced with the more mature and subtle happiness of being able to let go.

The novel ends as a more grown-up Gus confronts and forgives his parents, able now to see them simply as flawed people and to love them on their own terms.