Kari Strutt's Touching Bottom

fact that this essay has been referenced in so many other critiques on “The Swimmer”,

On Thursday, July 14, 2016, at approximately 0847 hours, Patrolman David Stamets had a vehicle stopped on the 100 block of East Oak Street. Immediately after Stamets stopped the vehicle Your Affiant positioned his vehicle on the 100 block of South White Street near the Oak Street intersection facing southbound. When exiting my vehicle your Affiant observed a gold Pontiac sedan accelerating northbound on South White Street at an unsafe speed towards Stamets and your Affiant's location.

Memory Laps by David Sedaris is about an unexpected hobby paradigm shift. When he was ten years old he learned how to swim at the Raleigh Country Club. He would compete in the summer and was not the best, and didn’t expect to be the best but fighting to prove his father wrong is what got him motivated to improve himself. His biggest competition in swimming was Greg and Greg’s biggest fan was David’s father who couldn’t get over comparing David to Greg and degrading David. Alas, David’s fuel to prove his father wrong pushed him to win a butterfly race competition against Greg.

Similarly, in ‘Swimming Upstream’, Fingleton uses close-up shots to convey the intensity and focus of Tony Fingleton, in preparation for the ‘Australian Brisbane Championships’. By means of an extreme close-up shot, Fingleton connected the audience to the main character by engaging the audience through the shoes of a professional swimmer. Doing so allowed the audience to feel what Tony felt and see what he saw.

“Under Water is easy to read and understand what is going on the essay. She describe about the struggle of the Gray, drowned in a deep water while adventuring on the green River. He was drowned simply because he “had not brought sneakers and one of his mountaineering boots had become wedged between two two rock” (Fadiman 159). Even the current continuous

In the novel Swamp Angel the main character, Maggie, asserts that "swimming is like living , it is done alone". This is, in fact, a very telling statement with respect to the life of both Maggie and the life of Dunstan, the main character in the novel The Fifth Business. Maggie's comparison of life to swimming raises interesting points about the way in which each of the two characters proceed along the road of life.

In her poem, The Swimming Lesson, Mary Oliver uses the story of her first time swimming as a metaphor for a life lesson on adapting to new situations. She does this in a detailed, significant manner, using different techniques. These methods pull you into the story, making you ponder about the structure and the deeper meaning of the poem. Firstly, one of these strategies is when Oliver exaggerates parts of the experience. A time when she exaggerates an event that took place, was in the beginning of the paragraph. “Feeling the icy kick, the endless waves. Reaching around my life.” (Line 1). Oliver puts emphasis on the feeling of swimming for the first time, leaving a vivid image in your head of what she experienced

The world of diving has been around since the 1800’s and has been seen at the Olympic games since 1904. It first started off being called “fancy-diving” where the aim was to plunge into the water and see who could achieve the furthest depth underwater. It then progressed and became more complex involving specific skills and dives which first only men were allowed to participate in, and later women came into the society. To this day, diving is one of the most popular events watched at the Olympic games; however this community remains small and structured because of its intricate characteristics (“History of Diving”, 1). Diving has been influenced by the constant updating of technology and is incorporated in this world through high schools, colleges and universities as well as numerous sporting events that occur around the world. A theorist named John Swales analyzes communities in more detail and states that communities continue to develop and change throughout the years and further calls these communities, discourse communities.

In “The Lake” the narrator and his mother experience a life threatening moment when they almost drown. Their father lets them go in a lake when they are unable to swim in attempt to “teach” them how. After the incident, there is

“The Swimmer” is an allegory that is narrated in third person point of view as someone who is observing Neddy’s journey. This

My head went back, and my feet popped up. I felt the frigid water seep into my hair, and soak my scalp. I heard my mom’s soft voice trying to keep me calm, and reminding me to keep my bellybutton up to the air as if some puppet master was holding it up by a string. Every time my mom tried to let me float by myself, my feet would begin to sink. It was as if I was a weight on a fishing line pulling it down into the dark abyss. I couldn’t seem to stay relaxed, I was as stiff as a two by four. That fire was still burning my inner forest deep within me. I remember startling myself out of the float, because I did not feel my mom’s hands supporting me anymore. I scrambled for footing on the bottom of the pool floor feeling the rough pool floor slip past my toes a couple times before I got the traction to stand up. I was kind of confused for a moment as I tried to get the water out of my eyes and nose. My family was now all out in the pool area, and I realized the moment I have been dreading for the past few years of my short life was here and I knew it. My family was going to have me jump off the diving board, in hopes that it would dissipate my excruciating fear of water. My heart was beginning to pound through my

Thesis/main topic – Learning how to swim is essential for being around water, it will help strengthen a person confidence, improve your physical fitness, and provide an area for stress release.

In the consuming darkness her body began to float upwards. Her mouth was open, letting in small discreet amounts of air, trying to buy as much time as she could before she ran out. Her fragile body was suspended in an awkward posture with her torso jutted forward and her limbs moving like a clockwork doll. Amongst the relentless whipping of the undulating waves she could hear her sister’s scream. She felt herself rise upwards as she continued to flail. She had to survive. She had to somehow reach the surface of the water and survive. She didn’t want to die. Not now. She was running out of air, no longer able to fight the urge to breathe. She looked up to see the sunlight, but she saw none. Then it dawned on her. She wouldn’t make it. She let

Central Idea: Swimming has a long and rich history that dates back way before our generations and is not always as beneficial as we may think.

The next part of the training turned out to be the toughest. We were required to dive ten feet to the bottom of the pool and retrieve a ten pound weight. Once the weight was brought to the surface we were supposed to tread water for two minutes while keeping the weight above the water line. This appeared to be simple so I dived in, expecting an easy time. I had no trouble getting the weight to the surface and proceeded to tread water with a feeling of undoubtable success. But once again my anti-floating physical quality began to take effect. At one minute and thirty seconds I began to sink and within the next fifteen seconds my head was submerged and I was fighting for air. The water from the pool began flowing into my mouth with each desperate grasp for air; it felt as if an ocean were draining into my body. I remember hearing from under the water the instructor's muffled voice counting down the last ten seconds of the exercise. When it was all over I slowly made my way back to the pool's edge where I was informed by the two young girls that they had no difficulty