Josh Ookeditse

Mr. Waltman
ENG 101
17 September 2018
Essay on All Over but the Shoutin’

Did you have a strong relationship with your father as you were growing up. Well in the
personal memoir All Over but the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg, he informs the reader of a critical
moment in his life where he met his father who had abandoned Bragg and his mother for years.
This topic is a very common issue throughout the world; however, the twist is that the father had
become even less of a man than when Bragg last saw him. This eye-opener caused Braggs to feel
a different emotion than what he expected to feel towards his father. The main point that this
memoir tried to express, in my opinion, is that things are not always as they seem and that life is
full of surprises. Bragg supports this through the description of the father, how Braggs expressed
his feelings towards his father, and the end of the memoir.
Firstly, in All Over but the Shoutin’, the father of Bragg was believed, at first, to be a
“trim, swaggering, high-toned rooster of a man” (Bragg 217). In reality, he had transfigured to an
old, sickly man that was so close to death that he could taste it. Even his house reflected his ill
appearance. It was a truly heartbreaking event that Braggs had faced because life had really
handed it to his father. This is the basis of how he supported the idea that things are not always
as they seem. Bragg hasn’t seen his dad for only several years so this transformation was very
shocking to him, and I’ll be honest that the father’s grotesque transformation even shocked me.
This was an excellent way of signifying the idea that most of us face all the time that life isn’t
always how it seems. Being left out on the details that caused his father to turn out this way
causes the reader to even imagine worse of what happened in Bragg’s father’s life to make him
turn out this way. The memoir itself proves how much it affected Bragg’s life just because he
wrote about this unfortunate meeting with his dead-beat father. This discovery of his father also
caused Bragg to begin to feel something more than just anger.
Bragg had come to his father’s home with only the feeling of anger, ready to burst and
go off on his dad whom had abandoned him and his mother years ago. As said from the previous
paragraph, Bragg had met his father and he was the opposite of what Bragg had expected. This
caused Bragg to feel bad for his father to the point where he couldn’t even go off on him, and
let’s be honest, could you bring yourself to yell and criticize someone who already seems to have
been beaten down by life. I know that I couldn’t do it so I was able to connect more with the
feeling and reason behind Bragg’s sympathy towards his father. Also, Bragg’s change in feelings
toward his father supports the idea that life is full of surprises because I am sure he was not
expecting to have feelings of sorrow for his father. What really caused a shift in Braggs emotion
towards his father was when his father had gave Bragg a large collection of books, remembering
that Bragg’s mother had said he liked reading. This showed Braggs that his father was at least
making an attempt to reconcile with his son before he wasn’t able to do so. Overall, this caused
Bragg’s feeling to change from straight anger to sympathetic but still holding resentment for his
father leaving. The fluster of emotions that rattled inside of Bragg was probably immense just
due to the fact that his father had caused him and his mother years of anguish and he tried to fix
it in one last meeting.
Finally, Bragg had alluded to the reader that his father did not have too much longer to
live. In a way, this emphasized the actions that the father had taken in order to try to reconcile
with Braggs before his time came. The father had collected all of his books and gifted them to
Bragg to at least attempt to apologize for leaving him and his other to fend for themselves. The
father never actually verbally apologized but instead did and said things to try and connect with
Braggs in their final meeting. It implied that the father had always regretted the decision of
leaving them and wanted to finally deal with his mistakes before he died. In a sense, this
supports the idea that life is full of surprises because it turns out that Bragg’s father had been
regretting his decision all along and that he actually still had some sort of feeling toward Bragg
and his mother. This is apparent in how the father had acted when Bragg had come to visit. In the
end, the father had died and finally tried reconciling with his son even if Bragg didn’t whole
heartedly accept it yet.
In conclusion, Bragg had gone through a very emotional event. The event of him and
his father reuniting had caused Bragg to understand and even mature emotionally to where he
could at least partially forgive his father. The fact that Bragg had wrote about this event proves
that it had a huge impact on his life that he felt he should share to others who may can connect to
the values and ideas behind it. This memoir is based on a very common event that, I am sure,
many others may have faced in some way. Bragg had shown that life is full of surprises and
things are not always how they seem through the description of the father, how Braggs expressed
his feelings towards his father, and the end of the memoir. His father may not have been the best
guy in the world; however, his attempt of trying to reconcile with his friend was enough to touch
Bragg to the point of writing the memoir about their last meeting.
 REFLECTION
This personal memoir connected with me due to the fact that I did not have a
close relation with my dad. Life can be very cruel sometimes and it seems to have given Bragg’s
father a beating. I have been angry before and wanted to just dog out the person that my anger
was pinpointed to, but, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. This is how I emphasized with Bragg
when he couldn’t say the things he had planned to say towards his father. This memoir is very
good in my opinion due to the twist of the father being a sickly, old man who was at the brink of
death. This is the basis of Bragg’s evolution in feelings and emotional maturity.