Follow the River

“‘Tommy, I must ask’ee to clean up Georgie a bit. He’s messed himself, poor tad…and, Tommy,’ she added, ‘thankee for not letting your auntie die on us. That was a good lad…’ ‘I won’t die on y’ now,’ Bettie murmured. ‘Forgive me such talk. I just…’ ‘Ssshhh, now. Nought to forgive.’”

The dialogue in Follow the River is written in dialect. This passage demonstrates the 18th-century Anglo-Irish dialect spoken by Mary and her family. It also shows how Mary is able to act sensibly and swiftly care for others even in extremely difficult circumstances when others, such as Bettie, give in.

“She looked at the star and hated men for all their meanness and hurtfulness and cruelty. Why is this happening to me? She demanded as the hideous squeezing pain returned, what have I ever done? The star went away and then came back, and she was euphoric, and her heart grew soft and big at the thought of William.”

In the most difficult moments of her journey, Mary relies on Faith and Love as a Source of Strength, particularly her love for her husband, Will. Here, Mary is in pain while giving birth in the woods, and the Shawnee men do not assist her. To keep herself motivated in this difficult time, she thinks about Will.

“‘But that river, Mary,’ Bettie exclaimed, nodding toward the O-y-o. ‘If they take us across it, how could we ever return?’ Mary looked toward the broad, black expanse of darkness where the river flowed. ‘I only know this, Bet. If there be a way to go somewhere, there must likewise be a way to return.’”

Mary routinely demonstrates practical, quick thinking that keeps her alive. Because she has the presence of mind to note major landmarks on her outbound journey, she is able to navigate home. Her comment to Bettie that “there must likewise be a way to return” foreshadows her eventual escape and journey home.

“She was dumbfounded by the sight of this unexpected civilization, by the extent of its agriculture. Her old imaginary notions of Indian life, of small, ragged bands of murderous nomads scattered through the forests and living unsheltered on the ground, were being forced out of her mind by this impressive scene, by this now murmuring mob of copper-skinned people moving en masse along the shore toward the town.”

Like most white settlers of the time, Mary holds unsophisticated and incorrect views about Indigenous Americans. When she arrives in the Shawnee village, these preconceptions are challenged, and eventually, Mary recognizes that Shawnee civilization is just as sophisticated, if not more so, than her own. This shows one aspect of the Relationships Between Settlers and Indigenous Americans at the time of the French and Indian War.

“Mary thought some more. ‘Is a checked shirt really worth two silver bracelets?’ she said. The Frenchmen looked at each other and grinned. They began chuckling, low in their throats. ‘A shirt,’ said Goulart then, ‘is worth what one will pay for a shirt. That, Madame, ees commerce.’”

The French and Indian War was largely sparked by disputes over territory and trade routes. Mary’s exchange with the French traders over their unfair business practices when dealing with the Shawnee people, their allies, highlights the cynical reality of these market-driven motivations. The Frenchmen’s dialogue is written in a somewhat parodical representation of a French accent, which is why “is” is rendered as “ees.”

“The baby at her breast had to become an object to her. Just an object. Her soul was still a huge gaping wound where her sons had been, as if a keen-edged knife had cut away a living part of her. She must see to it now that this infant, this tiny stranger who had joined her in the forest and ridden ever since on her back facing away from her, should not become such a part of her in this hazardous episode that its loss could break her spirit.”

Mary faces the fact that if she is going to escape, she will have to leave her newborn daughter behind. This quote describes how Mary pushes herself to prepare for the moment when she will have to leave her. It demonstrates Mary’s fortitude and strength in difficult circumstances. Ironically, the tool Mary uses to distance herself from her newborn—regarding the baby as merely an object—mirrors her own position as an objectified captive or pawn in a bigger conflict.

“To leave the baby with Otter Girl was the only humane choice. Yet it was as unthinkable as carrying it away to suffering and sure death. How could a mother ever say that she had abandoned her infant to savages? One could relate the circumstances and show why it had been the baby’s only way to live, but the awful fact would remain in anyone’s mind that here was a woman who had left her infant in the hands of heathens. Her decision was that she would leave the baby here. Give it a chance for life.”

Although Mary has learned an appreciation for Shawnee culture during her time with them, she still thinks of them as “savages” and “heathens.” She perceives white culture as superior, which only compounds her anguish at having to leave her child.

“He lay now, trying to pick up what she would be thinking. They had used to talk fanciful about being able to hear each other’s minds and see through each other’s eyes; that’s how close they had been. He imagined her thoughts as hard as he could, and came eventually to the conclusion that she was thinking about him.”

Mary and Will are tightly bound by their love for one another. While this is most often seen in Follow the River from Mary’s point of view, this quote from Will’s point of view shows the importance of Love and Faith as a Source of Strength for his character, too.

“She knew that Ghetel was now blaming her for their unspeakable circumstances, and she could see that the old woman was nurturing that resentment with every painful step they took and with every hollow twinge of hunger she felt, and that the resentment would surely only get worse from here on because food was getting to be almost impossible to find, and within a day or two they would be leaving the relatively easy terrain of the O-y-o valley and turning up into the steep and boulder-strewn valley where the waters of the New River twisted through the towering mountains of the Allegheny range.”

As Ghetel and Mary’s situation grows more dire, their Human Fragility in the Wilderness becomes ever more apparent. In this quote, Mary is forced to consider Ghetel as a possible threat, foreshadowing Ghetel’s later attacks. The description of the landscape they must cross next highlights the immensity of the challenge that awaits them.

“The winter-stripped trees were stark, and without foliage to screen it, the hard angularity of the terrain was forbidding: mountainsides tilting skyward, V-shaped ravines full of mossy boulders and detritus, huge fallen tree trunks strewn like jackstraws on the slopes and in the gullies or sometimes leaning half-fallen, hung in the branches of other trees. Some of the mountain ridges ended abruptly in sheer gray rock cliffs facing over the river. From some of these rock faces, water seeped and dribbled and darkened the rock, and in places, mountain springs and freshets would simply spew over the ramparts of such cliffs into space, disintegrating to mist before reaching the valley floor.”

Despite the terrors of the wilderness, author James Alexander Thom describes in great detail the natural beauty of the landscapes Mary and Ghetel travel through on their journey home. This quote is exemplary of the way he renders this “forbidding” landscape throughout Follow the River. The imposing beauty of the terrain also highlights the theme of Human Fragility in the Wilderness.

“In the snug worm-eaten hollow of the log, enveloped by the smell of decay, it was too much like being in a coffin. Then Ghetel rolled onto her back and groaned, and exhaled a rank breath into Mary’s face. She began to stir, then sank back into torpor. Mary hugged her. She’s not dead. But she’s ready to lie here and die.”

Mary and Ghetel are constantly on the verge of dying, highlighting the theme of Human Fragility in the Wilderness. In this context, even a “worm-eaten hollow of the log” can become a “coffin.” However, Mary’s patience with and dedication to her companion keep them both alive and give them motivation to continue.

“They lay breast to breast and belly to belly, each one’s arms full of the other’s bones. No warmth came, for a black, hissing eternity; instead, just a gradual numbing of the senses and a dulling of minds, a slowing and thickening of dreams, as if thought itself were congealing; and Mary’s last nameable thought was that this nothingness was the relief of death.”

Mary’s and Ghetel’s bodies slowly give way as they starve and freeze, unprotected from the elements. Eventually, to Mary at least, it is as if they are experiencing a kind of living death, even when sleeping. Thom uses visceral, sensory language to convey this feeling to the reader. The word “congealing” conjures images of blood, implying the women’s closeness to death.

“The women were passing under a steep gray cliff now, a hundred feet high, from which those huge monoliths evidently had fallen into the river. Across the river in a shadowy, narrow ravine, a creek poured over a stone ledge and cascaded in twenty-foot leaps down the picturesque, narrow notch it had carved for itself. It was the kind of place Mary would have lingered hours to gaze at under any other circumstances. Now, in her frightened and doubtful state of mind, things of great beauty saddened her.”

Thom routinely uses detailed language to describe the watery, rocky landscape the women are traveling through. Although this wildness is hostile to human life, it is nevertheless beautiful. However, to Mary, who has been experiencing it while starving and freezing for over a month, this beauty saddens her. This passage highlights Mary’s narrative arc by comparing the present Mary’s response to beauty to the reaction she would have had before being taken captive.

“To have come six hundred miles through a hostile wilderness and suffered such hardships, all in vain, would prove a God too mocking and cruel to abide. As it was now, she would scowl at the wintry sky several times a day and demand to know why a decent woman like herself had been thrown into this dank and thundering hell-pit.”

Throughout her journey, Mary’s faith in God is tested. As is seen in the following quote, she eventually returns to her faith. However, the difficult circumstances make her feel as if God has sent her to a “thundering hell-pit.” This passage reveals that while Mary often draws on Love and Faith as a Source of Strength, her relationship with faith is complicated by her dire situation.

“She was feeling very expansive toward the Lord now; she was thanking him for every little thing. It had become easier to believe in him after her discovery that they were on the right river after all. He did not seem quite so cruel and devious a God now; it was possible to forgive him for the forty days and forty nights of obstructions and sufferings he had put them through. But if he had had them on the wrong river all that time, he likely would have lost a believer.”

As this quote shows, Mary wrestles with her faith during her journey back to Draper’s Meadows. However, it also shows that she maintains a sense of humor about her situation, which helps keep her spirits up in difficult situations. The statement that “he likely would have lost a believer” is ironic.

“Nought but a couple o’ bugs, she thought. O how mighty stupendous this world is, and how feeble we, and O how far we’ve creeped over it! Ten times ten times ten. Aye, it’s no surprise if the Lord overlooks us entirely, as I fear He has done.”

One of the dominant themes of Follow the River is Human Fragility in the Wilderness. In this quote, Mary clearly articulates her smallness in the face of the “stupendous” world. She also reprises the idea of “ten times ten times ten”; this is the distance her own mother traveled over the ocean from Ireland to North America and is likewise the distance Mary is traveling back home.

“It seemed that she had been born and had spent all this present life ascending this maze of roaring canyons: blue-gray rock jutting into the heavens, green water, howling wind, caves, dead leaves, buzzards and eagles wheeling far overhead, wild animals lurking out of reach, tributaries and avalanches thwarting her progress, and the relentless cold, the merciless grinding and regrinding of the flesh of her feet, the endless wheedling and cajoling and pampering with Ghetel. And hunger.”

After many weeks in the wilderness, Mary is so worn out that she has lost all concept of civilization. This quote lists the manifold challenges she has faced during her journey. The emphasis on “hunger” demonstrates that this has been the primary challenge, illustrating both the symbolic and physical importance of food in the narrative.

“They stood over her, speechless, for minutes. They had never seen a human being in this condition. She was a skeleton covered with bruised and lacerated skin. Her hands and feet were bloody and swollen to a grotesque hugeness. Her knees were worn through to bone. Her hair, though matted and dirty, was white as snow.”

Mary is irrevocably changed by her journey. Her body reflects the toll it has taken on her, of which the starkest consequence is that her red hair has turned white. The description of Mary as a “skeleton” once again emphasizes how close she came to death on her journey.

“The unaccustomed richness of meat had flooded her bowels, but it was a miracle to be passing something more than seed-husks and beetle-wings and wood fiber; at least it was not the debilitating flux she had suffered so many recent times after eating poisonous roots. She crawled back under the bearskin and looked at the rediscovered beauty of glowing wood-embers and wick-flame. She was utterly overwhelmed by amazement and gratitude for the miracle of fire.”

Throughout Follow the River, Thom describes Mary’s bowel movements. While this is grotesque, it also demonstrates the bodily immediacy of the challenges she faces. When her bowel movements become more regular and she no longer suffers from “debilitating flux,” she knows that she has once again returned to civilization, symbolized here by the fire she was deprived of during her journey.

“O, he’s alive! was her first thought. And her second was: What’ll I tell him about th’ baby? The awful thought did enter his mind the moment he saw the face in the bed across the dim room and realized that it was Mary: Had she been spiled?”

This quote discusses the awkward reunion between Will and Mary after her ordeal. She is immediately wracked with guilt about having left their newborn. For his part, Will is worried that she has been “sp[o]iled,” or sexually assaulted, during her time with the Shawnee. During their time apart, each had viewed the other as a quasi-religious symbol that gave meaning to their respective journeys; now, finally reunited, the two grapple with the human element of their relationship, represented by their concerns about children and sex.

“Tears kept puddling in the old woman’s sunken hazel eyes, and her chin trembled, and Mary knew she wanted to be forgiven for her assaults. But Mary simply squeezed her hand to try to reassure her nothing needed to be said about it. Out there in the dark, cold valley, they had been ruled by the law of survival, not the law of men, and now that both had survived, the episode could be forgotten more easily than any breach of the laws of men could be.”

Mary and Ghetel had to do unthinkable things in order to survive in the wilderness. In this quote, Mary recognizes that Ghetel’s attack on her was not motivated by poor character but rather by Human Fragility in the Wilderness, or “the law of survival.” This passage establishes the duo’s trek as something that occurred outside of the bounds of normal human existence.

“‘Well, Gretel. No two souls was ever closer than you’n me.’ She pressed her cheek against the scabby, scaled, gnarled hand that had once in a different world tried to kill her for food, and she thought of that: there are no two souls closer than predator and prey are, in their moment, she understood.”

Mary is forever marked by her desperate efforts to survive. Although she is now in “a different world,” her experience has left her with a profound understanding of the harshness of the wilderness. Despite this, Mary demonstrates her persistent strength of character by comforting Ghetel before saying goodbye to her forever.

“And now here before him sat this little woman of his own age with her haunted eyes who, without provisions or weapons, had made a far more awesome passage, through utterly uncharted territory. The young colonel was not a man often overtaken by humility, but for this moment he felt humble.”

Even strangers, in this case Colonel George Washington, recognize the magnitude of what Mary accomplished. He holds her in esteem for her fortitude and survival skills. However, he also recognizes that she has been irrevocably changed by the experience, as shown by her “haunted eyes.”