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Summary Of We Live In Water

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We Live in Water is an award winning short story collection by Jess Walters. The short stories in We Live in Water depict everyday personal struggles from a male’s perspective. Walters creates the setting of most of the stories in the collection as Spokane, Washington. The choice to allow Spokane, Washington to be the setting as most of the stories is a huge contribution to the collection .Establishing Spokane as the setting is such a huge contribution to the story because Spokane is Jess Walters hometown. The setting as Spokane, Washington allows readers to interpret the story as a reflection of Jess Walters personal life. An idea Walters develops through most of his short stories is the generalized theme of entrapment. Entrapment can be described …show more content…

The story gives insight into the true meaning of the phrase “We Live in Water”. The short story we live in water is frame an narrative story. The father begins the story as the narrator in 1958 and the son emerges as a narrator in 1992. “We Live in Water” is told from two different perspective, the father, Oren and his son, Michael. Oren can be characterized as not the perfect father or man, but he still manages to prove to his son there is a way to escape entrapment and it is a choice. The unmoral decisions Oren makes causes him to lose his life. Before Oren is faced with death Michael asks his father the simple question “Do we live in water ?” (18). Oren is clueless about the purpose and meaning behind the question. As the story develops the answers is constructed. Michael in the story is infatuated with an aquarium. The aquarium is symbolic to theme of entrapment. The aquarium represents people are entrapped in their lives like fish are in a fish tank .The narrator states “Michael watched them swim the way … he looked out at the world .And that’s when Oren understood” (38). Michael interpretation of the aquarium represents the way he viewed the world .The description of the fish motion as “invisible and impassible, turn, go around and turn again.. swam in its circles , as if he believed that.. the …show more content…

The short story focus on a relationship between a father, Bit, and his son, Nate. Bit is not the ideal father due to his struggle with alcohol abuse. Bit loses his wife, son and basically everything due to his alcohol abuse. In the story the question, “When we gonna get our shit together” is constantly asked throughout the text (6). The question reflects the theme of entrapment .In the story Bit buys his son a Harry Potter book despite the fact he lives in a halfway house and is poor. The idea of escaping entrapment is represented through Bit son, Nate who lives in a foster home. Nate escapes entrapment because his foster family opens Nate up to many opportunities. Bit is unable to give Nate these opportunities due to his alcohol abuse. Nate and Bit relationship displays the symbolic aquarium. The father, Bit makes the choice to allow his son to escape the entrapment he has been faced with. The choice Bit makes for his son represents Oren response, “You can do whatever you want.”(39). Bit choice is represented because without his foster family he would stuck just like his father. In the story the quote, “you think you’re through with some things. But you aren’t” relates directly to Michael description of the way the fish swam in the aquarium(15).There is an connection between the two stories because Michael describes the fish swam in the aquarium as if the glass one day would no

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In his short story collection We Live in Water, Jess Walter echoes the theme that people are products of their environment, despite any effort to escape the adversities that hold them back. This theme clearly appears in the opening story, “Anything Helps,” where a widowed and homeless man, Bit, tries to recover from the death of his wife by making amends with his estranged son. This devastating yet heartwarming story shows how one man goes to great lengths in an attempt to change his life. Walter also exposes the theme in the most prominent piece of the collection. The story “We Live in Water” provides a flashback and flash-forward structure by following Oren Dessens, a man who cheats on his wife and has conflict with the worst man in town and describing the journey of Michael, a lawyer returning to his hometown expecting to find his absent father, but instead, ends up learning more about himself

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