Deep Water

Deep Water



A piece from Deep Water, a short story by William Douglas. I had not been there long when a big bruiser of a boy came and yelled at me. He said “Hey skinny, how’d you like to be ducked.” With that he picked me up and threw me into the deep end. I landed in a sitting position, swallowed water, and at once I sank to the bottom. It seemed like a long way down. Those nine feet were more like ninety feet. Before I touched bottom, my lungs were ready to burst. Nine feet is a long way down for a kid that does not know how to swim.

When I was first learning how to swim, I, too, went to the Y.M.C.A. to take swimming lessons but, in the middle of the class, someone always lost their lunch in the pool. I also made a connection to the part about him being afraid of the deep end. Whenever I went swimming when I was young, I always stayed away from it because I couldn’t swim. After I was able to swim, my mom and dad got a pool and every summer we swim in it. So, I made a connection that swimming is fun if you know how to do it, like the author said when he learned as an adult. As William Douglas said, he swam 2 miles in a lake. It reminded me of when my dad did the Pewaukee triathlon, but he didn’t have to swim 2 miles.

Swimming two miles is a very big accomplishment. I think that swimming two miles is like killing William Douglas’s fear of drowning. Killing that fear is like a death symbolism which goes with the irony mode of literature. That is also why I think that Deep Water is the irony mode of literature. The irony mode starts out with the world being in chaos. For William, the world of swimming is in chaos because he can’t swim, so he is afraid of drowning. Next the story moves to a major conflict which involves death or loss of sanity. For William, the death was him almost dying because of drowning. Later on in his life, he decides that he is going to finally learn how to swim which conquers his fear of drowning. This conquering is like saying it is dead or doesn’t exist, and that is what I thought of as the death symbolism.

For a kid that does not know how to swim, nine feet is a long way down to the bottom of a pool. How would you save yourself? Swimming is a big part of life for everyone and knowing how to swim is very important for your safety. If you don’t know how to swim, you miss some of the opportunities that a lot of people have and enjoy. If swimming wasn’t a big part of the world or knowing how to swim wasn’t important, no one would give swimming lessons. That’s why swimming lessons open the door for everyone to learn how to swim, have fun and be safe.