Theme Of Regret And Fear In The Film Water

This is Water, was a commencement speech given by David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005. Ever since this speech has been given it has become well known. Because of the length, it can be hard to read through the speech while trying to understand the whole idea of it. Wallace fills the speech with stories, examples, and vivid ideas while trying to convince these college graduates how to view life in a positive perspective. While this speech is packed full of ideas he manages to give it in a way outside of the norm for commencement speeches. Yet still gets all the information to the graduates and anyone else who listens to it.

The river represents the period between life and death. Another part of this symbol is the air representing life and under the rocks and waterfall representing death. Just as the transition from life to death is in motion, so is the rushing of the water. Both have a beginning and an ending point, but the part in the middle is constantly moving, swirling and churning. As the girl loses hope for survival and the waterfall is approaching, the narrator states, “[S]he becomes part of the river” (45). The girl now crosses over the borderline of life and death, and she is about to be swallowed up by the falls of death and can never return to life. However, when the diver goes into the river to save her, he comes out saying that “he’d never enter that river again” (47). He encounters the spiritual eccentricity of the edge of death when he looks into lifeless girl’s animated eyes, and he can not fathom that experience. Another symbol that is introduced twice is the gurgle of the aquarium, which symbolizes the attempt to understand nature’s cycle of life. As she floats downstream, the girl remembers “her sixth-grade science class, the gurgle of the aquarium at the back of the room”(45). During this moment, all of her thoughts are puzzled, and she cannot understand the death awaiting her. Later on, after sleepless nights, the diver is in the empty school where “the only sound the gurgle of the aquarium” (48). This moment is the point at which he decides

Two other important symbols are the moments of silence throughout the story, and the reoccurring usage of water. Each occurrence of silence in James Baldwin’s story is of great importance. In a tale centered around music, silence stands out more than noise. Once Sonny was confronted by Isabel and her family about his constant piano playing and stopped, “The silence of the next few days must have been louder than the sound of all the music ever played since time began” (Baldwin 351). To Sonny, this silence is deadly. He lives his life for music. The stillness marks the beginning of his downfall. During the narrator’s first flashback to childhood, he recalls a sense of dismal seriousness, “For a moment nobody’s talking, but every face looks darkening, like the sky outside” (Baldwin 344). Even a child can feel that there is some sort of inescapable impending pain that everyone knows about, yet no one wants to discuss. However, that is the exact subject that Sonny addresses in his music. Water

Water is used in “Children of the Sea” as a method of escape for Haitians. The story consists of letters by two people written to each other that they can not actually send. In the beginning of the story, Danticat writes “I also know there are timeless waters, endless seas, and lots of people in this world whose names don’t matter to anyone but themselves,” (3). This part of the male character’s letter alludes to the fact that his story of trying to escape Haiti and the struggles that come with that is not just

The thoughts and emotions that occur in connection with water are triggered by the lake, and they help Ruth choose transience over any other form of existence. When water floods Fingerbone, the boundaries are overrun, exposing the impermanence of the physical world, and the world’s own natural push towards transience. Water shifts the margins, warning us that the visible world only shows us part of the whole--or perhaps even a mere reflection of a false reality. After the fantastic train wreck in which Ruth’s grandfather perished, the lake sealed itself over in ice, changing boundaries again, while it concealed, like a secret, the last traces of the victims with the illusion of its calm surface. The lake, a source of beauty and darkness, life and death, is “the accumulated past, which vanishes but does not vanish, which perishes and remains” (172). Water carries the symbolic possibility for rebirth– the flood causes the graves in the town cemetery to sink, “so that they looked a little like…empty bellies," suggesting that the dead were born into the receding waters (62). As water and death are so pre-eminent in Sylvie’s consciousness, in dream, she teaches Ruth to dance underwater, to live a life of transience to be

In The things they carried the fear of shame is a heavy influence behind most of the men’s actions and emotions. It is the motivating behind them being in Vietnam in the first place, the determining verdict between going to war and being killed and fleeing for Canada was so manipulated by how much shame these young men would feel just for fleeing for their lives. The decision was mainly based on what they’re friends, family, country would think of them if they did something so human like not wanting to die and doing what everyone else thought the right thing to do was. “All the eyes on me—the town, the whole universe and I couldn't risk the embarrassment I felt myself blush. I couldn't tolerate it. (On the Rainy River. Page 69)”.

 Water represents Sethe's transition from slavery to freedom. Sethe left Sweet Home pregnant with Denver, "and ran off with no one's help" (p.224). She ran scared and fearful of the trackers following her trail.  Sethe met Amy Denver, a white women, on her way to Ohio.  Amy helped Sethe find the Ohio River.  The river was "one mile of dark water...[and] it looked like home to her and the baby"(p.83).  When Amy left, Sethe traveled downstream and met Stamp Paid.  He helped her and Denver cross the river to freedom.  Stamp took Sethe upstream, "and just when she thought he was taking her back to Kentucky, he [Stamp Paid] turned the flatbed and crossed the Ohio like a shot" (p.91).  The river locked away the memories of Sweet Home and began her life with Denver at 124.   Water represents the transition of Sethe's slave life to her life of freedom.  Again, water has cleansed the soul of the sin of slavery. The river is now a barrier.  It separates Sethe's life of slavery, to her new life of freedom.

Water is a necessity for life. Beloved’s rebirth holds the entire meaning of life within water. “A fully dressed woman walked out of the water (50)”. Although Beloved was murdered she continues to live

The water is symbolic of romantic love as an overwhelming and transforming force that changes in form and changes the people involved. The wave is large, unpredictable and spans out as far as the eye can see. The movement of an all-encompassing emotion like love is impossible to contain, much like water. It is free flowing and goes on forever. “Love was a game, a perpetual creation (Paz, 2). Love and water are both creations of the divine and humans tend to use and abuse them. However, humans are emotional and social animals who need both love and water to survive. Waves have a way of hitting humans all at once, just like love. It renders humans excited and full of surprise at first “wave of surprise” (Paz, 2) like a crashing delight. It also leaves us always wanting more. We have an unquenchable thirst for love and affection, thus we chase it even in its most sinister forms, like an abusive relationship. The narrator is accepting of the wave 's presence when she appears in his home where he was once hesitant of the idea of her in his life. Love also transforms and can change us, like water changes states. It can become overwhelming and hard to breathe, but it is often all around us and

“How can you buy or sell the sky-the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. Yet we do not own the freshness of air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us? We will decide in our time” (Chief Seattle: 1855). In the Documentary “Flow – for the love of water” it visualizes the global crisis we face on Mother’s Earth as it pertains to the diminishing of fresh water. The Documentary portrays along with the help of experts that this global crises is affecting each and every one of us in today’s society including animals. The film shows us that water is constantly being wasted, polluted, and privatized by big co operations. Prime examples of these greedy companies were mentioned in the film such as Nestle, Thames, Suez,

At the beginning of the novel, the motif of water is used to represent Sarah and Handful’s hope for freedom and unnoticeable, understated rebellions. The imagery of water is utilized to represent Sarah’s quiet defiance in her campaign for autonomy and fight to become a lawyer.

In her novel Beloved, Toni Morrison writes about the life of former slaves of Sweet Home. Sethe, one of the main characters, was once a slave to a man and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Garner. After Garner’s sudden death, schoolteacher comes to Sweet Home and takes control of the slaves. His treatment of all the slaves forced them to run away. Fearing that her children would be sold, Sethe sent her two boys and her baby girl ahead to her mother-in-law. On the way to freedom, a white girl named Amy Denver helped Sethe deliver her daughter, who she later names Denver. About a month after Sethe escapes slavery, schoolteacher found her and tried to bring her back. In fear that her children would be brought back into slavery, Sethe killed

A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway, is a story about love and war. Frederic Henry, a young American, works as an ambulance driver for the Italian army in World War I. He falls tragically in love with a beautiful English nurse, Miss Catherine Barkley. This tragedy is reflected by water. Throughout the novel Ernest Hemingway uses water as metaphors. Rivers are used as symbols of rebirth and escape and rain as tragedy and disaster, which show how water plays an important role in the story.

In the two novels, Masters of the Dew and Praisesong for the Widow, water is an evident representation of change between opposite ideas throughout the overall plots. In Masters of the Dew, Jacques Roumain tells the story of Manuel, a Haitian peasant who struggles to save his native village, Fonds Rouge, from severe drought and division of the villagers. Later, Manuel finds a large reservoir of water but only tells the secret to one person. Towards the end of the story, the village is saved, but only after the divided village agree to work together and build an irrigation system after Manuel dies. In spite of Manuel’s death, the people of Fonds Rouge finally access water. In his death, there was change--reconciliation. In this novel, water symbolises change, from death to life--revival. In Praisesong for the Widow, the symbolism is similar, but not as literal. The story starts with Avey Johnson, an African American widow, on a cruise ship with her friends. However, Avey starts to feel an indescribable urge to

Joseph Conrad, in his novella Heart of Darkness, utilizes different forms of water to represent how water can be a destructive force but also a sign of renewal.