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What Is The Theme Of The Water Was Dark By Tim Winton

899 Words4 Pages

This story is important in teaching us about the importance of identity and what it’s like to not belong. This short story written by Tim Winton, “the water was dark” explores the feeling of loneliness within one’s self and how your family life is your biggest influence by default. We see a young girl struggling with her home life, needing a way to escape the negative tension between her and her mother, resorting to swimming. While reading this story, we identify the search for identity is a process and a journey.

Separation from parents' behaviours and attitudes and the use of alcohol, is a step in a good direction. Suffering from an unstable household, the girl in ‘the water was dark’ uses the skill of separation and detachment against her mother to move forward in a healthy manner. “Because she waited, her scars were hideous” was the result of her mother being drunk and depressed while also smoking. For the girl, this sparks the …show more content…

‘The water was dark’ concludes a young girl how’s love for swimming helps her escape her incapable, depressive mother. “Maybe that’s why I started swimming, she thought, to stop her from drowning me” is the thought process the young girl has. The meaning behind this is that instead of drowning by her mothers comments and habits, she found another world through swimming to have somewhere to go when she found herself slipping away. When she realises that “she didn’t love it (swimming) the way the others did, she knew she couldn’t be without it,” we figure that the reason she couldn’t be without it is because of how she uses swimming as an escape goat from life. She loves swimming for a different reason for others; others do swimming because they love the sport and to stay fit, she swims for the way it makes you feel and the fact that when you swim, you only think about your style, breathing and technique, you don’t have room to think of anything

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