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FORESHADOWING
In Peace Like a River, there are several times when foreshadowing allows us to vaguely determine what will happen next in the book. And even though we cannot possibly foresee an ending as magnificent as this book has, we can know what type of ending it will have.
In other words, we can't know what will happen, only in what way it will happen. For example, lets take a look at the ending of this book.
As the plot comes down to its final climax, Jeremiah Land, who has been performing the miracles throughout this entire story, sacrifices his life so that his son Reuben may live. How can this be foreseen?
First of all, we are constantly shown Jeremiah's love for his children, and his desire to keep them alive. In the very first chapter of the book, Jeremiah brings his son back to life in the first few minutes after he is born. Reuben had stopped breathing for a time long enough to kill a newborn, but somehow, in someway, Jeremiah is able to bring him back. We can see from the start that it comes to protection, this particular father has more than just a special touch. Combine this impulse to keep his children from harm with the fact that he does indeed do some extraordinary things, and we can more than expect that somewhere along the line of this story Jeremiah will perform one final act of fatherly love.
And he does.
We can also gather from some of the things the characters in the story say that certain events will happen. Take for example Reuben's constant repition of the phrase "Make of it what you will." He says this several times, each time after a certain landmark in the plot. Is it not obvious that Reuben is bound to use these words again during the most important part of the story?
Leif Enger has produced a work that is much like life itself: we can analyze certain events in, we can sometimes predict what will happen, but we can never see anything in its full light until its right there infront of us.
ALLUSION
There is not shortage of allusion in Peace Like a River, and they come in an astounding variety. The first and most obvious form of allusion in this story is of the religious nature. Biblical allusions can be seen when Reuben's father walks off a solid surface and continues walking on thin air, and when he is able to heal a man's sickly face by placing his hand over it.
There are allusions to Westerns all the time. The very backbone of the story involves an outlaw on the run and an authority figure looking for him. The family heads west, and Jeremiah falls in love with a woman that has given him hospitality, a very common theme in Western stories. Swede is all the time writing about such Western greats as Butch Cassidy, and her own made up traditionally crafted western heroes.
There are also allusions that remind us of Leif Enger's love for the written word. There are allusions to the classic story Little Women, to the hubris so often embodied in Greek and Roman literary characters, most prominently Ulysses in The Odyssey, to two of the most famous literary characters of all time, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
And there are so many other allusions as well: To the stars, Orion and Sirius and the Big Dipper and Arcturus, to King Harold and the Battle of Hastings and Saxon England, to Shakespeare's works Julius Ceaser and Romeo and Juliet.
Enger's work is full of allusion, giving it depth and quality. We feel with these endless references that his characters are part of a real world, of our world.
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SYNTAX
There is no proper way to describe the style of writing used by Leif Enger in Peace Like a River. "Literary License" comes close, but still doesn't quite do justice to the beautiful style in which he has chosen to tell his story to us. Perhaps there is no way to really define what Enger has done here, it can only be shown using the words from the book.
Take a look at the most common example. Here Enger turns just one simple sentence into something that just verbally flows.
"So home we stayed, Swede and I, for one more week."
Look at what Enger has done here. Instead of saying "So Swede and I stayed home for one more week," like most any other author would do, he has taken the sentence parts and rearranged them in a way so that a short sentence like this one is interesting and unique. It has a sense of mystery to it, as thought the way this line reads indicates that this was an important time in Reuben's, (the speaker) life.
This, once again, is the most common way Enger expresses his poetic freedom. He does it in more complex ways as well. By adding such small phrases as "Of note, I think, is to mention that...", and "Not to lose my point here...", Enger not only makes us feel that the characters in the story are actually speaking to us, but he creates a story full or just dripping with rich words.
Look now at one last example in which Enger writes in a very original way. There is a part of the book in which Reuben's father uses the word "escalation" in his speech, and Reuben does not know what his father is speaking about.
Reuben the goes on to tell us: "I succeeded in worrying about this escalation business for a good day and a half before worry died, as usual, at the hands of routine."
When Enger could have said "I worried about this escalation business for a day and a half before my usual routine made me forget it," he instead gives us a trully interesting and rich sentence. In addition to using this one sentence for originality purposes, Enger is able to convey several ideas to us. Several ideas, in only one sentence. We can understand form this that Reuben has a life based on doing the same things everyday, and that this life allows him to concentrate on his duties. We can see also that worry for Reuben, is an enemy. He speaks of it as though it were almost another character. It lives, and then it dies. With his particular syntax, Enger shows us that he is a master of the English language, and of the spoken word.
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