Breathing underwater by alex flinn was a book about a teenage relationship gone bad by physical and verbal abuse. Nick and caitlyn were in a relationship and at first they were happy until nick started calling her names. Soon enough the name calling lead to abuse and caitlyn pressed charges. nick writes a journal every day and goes to an anger management class by court order. Nick and Caitlyn's relationship isn't healthy and this will explain why nick hit caitlyn, could the abuse be prevented, and how does abuse reflect his relationship. The first time nick hit caitlyn was because she was to close to him trying to grab the wheel to his car as he was swerving from lane to lane. She thought they were going to get killed so instinctively she
Ron Rash’s novel—Saints at the River—begins with a short prologue, in which, a twelve year old girl drowns. Rash uses lyrical syntax and emotionally-charged imagery to establish a macabre tone.
Both are small, close-knit fishing communities in the east coast of Canada. Similarly, they revolve around an aspect of tragedy, the looming threat of death, danger, and sadness. In “The Boat”, the father dies suddenly and brutally, which haunts his son for the rest of his life. In “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood”, the young boys mother and stepfather are killed in a car accident and it leaves him (seemingly) with no present parents left. This breaks the grandparents hearts and leaves them feeling broken and lonely, holding onto the young boy who is all they have left. Both fathers’ seem to do what they feel is in the best interest of their sons. One can take the aspect of the father in “The Boat” as committing suicide to release he son from the chains of the small town, just as the father in “The Lost Salt Gift of Blood” finally meets his son and feels the need to leave him in the comfort of his grandparents for the child’s
Her use of the diving story really allowed her to express her experience with her mother without the reader feeling unable to relate, the fact that these events happened directly to her gave her whole argument more power due to the fact that she is able to say she did that first hand and she felt guilt prior to the events, and her appeal to emotion allowed her to give the reader a glimpse of the regret she felt thinking back on the whole experience. It is very challenging to think back on painful events and critique what one did wrong, Hopes essay urges the reader to try overcome their challenges so they won’t be able to share the same feeling as regret as she
Tim Winton’s short story, ‘The Water Was Dark and it Went Forever Down’, depicts a nameless, adolescent girl who is battling the voices inside her head along with the powerful punishments at the hands of her inebriated mother. The key concerns of life and death are portrayed through the girl’s viewpoint as she compares her life with her sad, depressed mother. Anonymous as she is, the girl constantly makes an attempt to escape the outbursts, that come as a result to her mother’s drinking, by submerging herself into the water. An extended metaphor is used when expressing the girl as a machine and her will to continue surviving in her sombre life.
Like an iceberg, Cole Douglas's depravity and lack of care and empathy for others lay ninety percent hidden. With his good looks and personable, charming demeanour on display for the world to see, the remainder of the twenty-three year old's true self lay in wait for an unsuspecting ship to pass in the middle of the night. To tear a ragged hole torn in it's hull and sink to the bottom of the ocean before it could react or the warning sirens be triggered. Forever damaged, even if was subsequently recovered from the murky depths.
Junot Díaz, unlike most authors, has an ability to tell his stories without the use of large, descriptive passages. With only a few words he can immerse his readers into the environment of his stories, such as the subject work, Drown. Whether in a comfortable suburb or a decrepit neighborhood, Junot Diaz is skilled in producing active scenes with minimal words in his piece Drown. As Barbara Stewart writes about Junot’s work in Outsider with a Voice, “The New Jersey of which [Junot] writes is the one he knows: a place of blue-collar towns and Latino immigrants, of tostones (mashed fried plantains) and malls and roads where ‘beer bottles grow out of the weeds like squashes’” (New York Times, 8 Dec. 1996). I agree with Stewart’s assertion that, “[Junot] writes about the [place] he knows” because of his rich environmental descriptions, and the way he uses this information to provide context within Drown. Díaz uses his language to immerse the reader into his works. One chapter within Drown that illustrates this well is “Aurora”, a chapter centered on the life of drug dealer Lucero and his romantic endeavors with a questionable woman named Aurora. Díaz uses his careful word choice to illustrate the story setting, to provide context clues, and to provide a deeper meaning to the text in “Aurora”.
“A Secret Lost in the Water” is a short story by Roch Carrier. It is a story about how young millennials are forgetting their traditional way of life and are moving into the modern era. The story takes place in a small village where everyone knows one another. “A Secret Lost in the Water” is a story about a father tries to teach his son an important skill of how to find water with an elder branch, but the son does not value it and loses the skill. The main theme in “A Secret Lost in the Water” by Roch Carrier is how individuals’ choices are affected by their values best displayed the father, the son, and the generation gap.
For this essay, I am going to be discussing the short story “Swimming” found on the New Yorker, and written by T. Cooper. I have chosen this story for many reasons, and among those reasons is the personal sadness I felt when I first read the story, almost as if the universe was placing a certain theme in my life, that only the main character could possibly understand. I am talking about running, the god given instinct felt by all men, inherent in the nature of fear, and brought out in all who feel sadness in its full intensity. Though in my short life I can not compare the sadness I have felt with that of losing a child at my own hand, but if I had been placed in that situation, if fate had tempted my soul with such a sequence of events, I would like to think I could find the strength to endure and the courage to not abandon all I had previously known. Yet I am able to reconcile the themes of grief, the mode of recovery, and the longing to escape such a terrible tale. I think in this piece, as I will discuss in later parts, the author was able to put into words a transformation we rarely get to observe in closeness, the kind of transformation that turns a kind man into a “just man” the kind of death that turns this world from a beautiful and happy place into a world that is closing in on our main character, that is forcing him to surface temporarily and gasp for air, much like he does when he finds peace in the water, wading breath after air, after sea. I firmly believe that
Let the Water Hold Me Down by Michel Spurgeon is written in a very unique and skillful way of the realities of being of human, and dealing with loss and grief, guilt and longing, loyalty and love. These psychopathologies affect the readers and present a different way of seeing the text. By applying critical theory to this novel, not only the reader but the main character, Hank Singer, gets a different perspective, a new lens after making several changes in his life. Critical theory helps individuals observe from an unusual angle and learn things in new ways, different from his or her typical way of viewing things. It opens up new lenses, and through this new lens, it can lead to new understanding or unfortunately, make things harder to understand. "Knowledge is what constitutes our relationship to our world, for it is the lens through which we view our world"Tyson states if the lens is changed, the view and the viewer may be changed as well.
Notwithstanding their partner’s contempt of reading and writing, both the father in “The Boat,” and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” continue to search for reprieve through their respective books and diary.
The protagonist is a very dependent individual due to critical moments in her childhood where she relies on her father for guidance and strays away from her fears, specifically her fear of murky waters. The main character in the story relies on her father for all of her childhood; he acts as a safety blanket to her and uses a yellow towel to physically comfort her: “He wrapped me in a clean yellow towel, and the fear, what was left of it, evaporated” (124). When the girl turns seven, she attends Camp Kinaird with many other young girls where they all learned how to swim. This camp was where
Indigenous communities in Canada have long suffered from trauma that has largely been afflicted by Canada’s colonial past. This very idea is still prevalent today. “it takes an ocean not to break,” begins with the somber thoughts of the narrator reflecting on the suicide of a youth, she deeply cared about. who was close to her. Her statement: “i was in love with the idea that finally we had given birth to a generation that didn’t have to spend their adult lives recovering from their childhood.” (Simpson 79) represents the hope that in 21st century intergenerational trauma would no longer be prevalent in Indigenous society. The narrator also mentions “you weren’t going to drown yourself in anything.” (Simpson 79) This references the idea of substance abuse that has been prominent in Indigenous communities. The hopeful ideas quickly disappear when the speaker faces reality and the fact the youth was in a collision course with “a diagnosed train wreck”. (Simpson 79)
The structure of a novel enables it to embody, integrate and communicate its content by revealing its role in the creation and perception of it. A complex structure such as that of Robert Drewe’s work The Drowner, published in 1996, refers to the interrelation or arrangement of parts in a complex entity1. Drewe’s novel is a multi-faceted epic love story presenting a fable of European ambitions in an alien landscape, and a magnificently sustained metaphor of water as the life and death force2. The main concerns of the novel include concerns about love, life, death and human frailty. These concerns are explored through the complex structure of the novel. That is, through its symbolic title, prologues, and division into sections. The
Even though, jerry wants to be accepted and in control of his life, the harsh reality is Jerry’s identity wants to be with his mother. Further throughout the story the tunnel is shown as the symbol of the story; letting the reader know that Jerry senses that it is the door to his identity. Additionally, the chronological structure is effective throughout the story in showing the process of growing up and an insight into Jerry’s transformation. Moreover, the 3rd person omniscient narrator and formal register presents the character of Jerry and his mother in a distanced way and without a biased perspective. This suggests the sense of detachment and alienation that Jerry is starting to feel from his mother as he is growing up and wanting to make his own choices. The story is firstly introduced with a description of the mother carrying a bright striped purse. It was this and other uses of describing Jerry’s surroundings with the use of bright colours symbolising jerry’s childish world and thoughts. In addition, the thought of jerry’s childish thoughts shows his struggle to establish his own identity. The author writes that Jerry goes swimming “over a region where rocks lay like discoloured monsters under the surface”. The simile shows that even though Jerry wants to be independent and swim alone in the bay, he’s terrified of being alone in the water and not seeing his mother again. Briefly, Jerry learns that you cannot
In “Diving Into The Wreck”, Rich’s well crafted imagery and use of an extended metaphor helps to develop a powerful theme. In this poem, Rich suggests once people go through a traumatic experience they tend to hide behind a false memory they create in order to protect themselves. In order for people to completely heal themselves, they must be willing to go back into the memories they have suppressed. By taking this journey, they can reclaim what beauty was lost and put to rest the damage that was done, allowing for a rebirth of their soul.