Brothers of Water
A man carrying a log roughly the length of his body waded into the river. His beard was matted, and the dark splotches climbing up his parka marked how waterlogged he had become. He stood waist deep in the river, holding the log just below the surface. For an hour he raised and lowered the wood, watching how the water reacted, and how the different depths changed the amount of force he took on.
Under the weight of his jacket and the muted sensation of blood returning to his iced legs, the man returned to shore. From behind a patch of naked trees, a second man approached his shivering counterpart with a small wave. A neck tie was just visible beneath the tweed picot he wore.
“Alright, Brian?”
“Never better,” Brian replied,
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He took off each sock and rung them out, not really watching where the water fell. His eyes were lost to the depths of the river. Brian watched a leaf float across what had been his home for the last hour. Behind him, the sun had just started setting and the chill of the October night was starting to set in. His bones were cold, and his fingers fumbled with the laces as he replaced his shoes.
“Bit cold for this, isn’t
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“Have you told her about this?”
“’Bout what?”
“This,” Elijah said, motioning. Even with his hands in front of the vents, Elijah could see that he was shaking.
Brian smiled and turned his gaze away, back towards the river.
“Do you ever wonder what it’d be like to live somewhere else?” he asked. His breath stuck to the window, fogging up a large section. Eli put his sleeve to work, clearing his view of the water. “To be someone else? Different body, different life, different thoughts.”
“How long were you in there?” Elijah asked, switching the flow towards Brian’s feet. He was sweating under his picot.
“You’ve never wondered what it’d be like if it was different? Why we’re here, why we’re doing what we’re doing. Same routine, same faces, same day, over and over.”
“I’d want to be the Queen.”
“What?”
“I’d want to be the Queen of England.”
“Forget
Water is a powerful medium for introspection. This truth is evident in the short story, 'Greasy Lake,' by T. Coraghessan Boyle. In this story, water serves as a catalyst for self-reflection, as it propels the protagonist into a certain degree of conflict, and ultimately works to reveal and confront the character?s inner struggle.
In the book Boys In the Boat, Daniel Brown tells the story of the U.S.’s rowing team’s Olympic journey to gold in 1936. The games were held in Berlin, right under Hitler’s eye. Though the games were held in Berlin that didn’t stop Joe Rantz, the book’s main character, and his team from going for gold. The boys had to show perseverance and teamwork to even be able to row. From country boys, to gold medal winners, rowing and hardships helped them embody the American spirit of hard work and teamwork. The boys had to overcome hardships, to work hard, and they never stopped being a team in order to win gold in Berlin.
Lennie appeared out of the brush by the deep, green pool of the Salinas River. He had been running. He knelt down quietly by the pool’s edge and drank barely touching his lips to the water. He finished drinking and sat down embracing his knees on the bank, facing the trail entrance. He became very skittish and jumpy. Every little noise prodded for his attention. He knew he had made a huge mistake and George would be mad at him. He had remembered though, that George told him to hide here and wait for him.
The night was so still that they heard the frozen snow crackle under their feet. The crash of a loaded branch falling far off in the woods reverberated like a musket-shot, and once a fox barked, and Mattie shrank closer to Ethan, and quickened her steps.
“I have lived every day of my life asking myself ‘is what I’m doing reflective of who I am? Or who I want to be?’ If not...”
How do humans find ways to create empathy for others in modern society? With the walls that people build around themselves and the way society is constructed, empathy for one’s the fellow humans can be quite rare. In the collection of short stories We Live in Water by Jess Walter, the author constructs tales of troubled characters in a way that allows the reader to feel empathy; two of the author’s stories that exemplify this empathy are “Anything Helps” and “The Wolf and the Wild”. The short story “Anything Helps” tells the tale of a homeless man’s journey to buy his son a Harry Potter book as well as dealing with his own inner conflicts. “The Wolf and the Wild” is the story of a rich ex-con who works with kids for community service and his struggles to find his place in life after his own demons with his job and family. Jess Walter uses interior monologue and dialogue within
When reading “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace, I noticed that he placed an emphasis on developing skills to perceive what is real. He introduces to us a scenario of two young fishes where one asks the other “What the hell is water?” (Wallace 1). A question that is obvious and easily realized, but, not seen because of their inability to see water which is a real substance. Furthermore, he displays how this inability to view reality is part of our day-to-day life. Developing the ability to be aware of our surroundings and learning how to think is what Wallace encourages every person to do in order to truly be free and care for others.
We soldiers set out on foot not too long later, led by the brave general, George Washington. It was December now, and the cold, brisk, winter air sent shivers down my spine. We would eventually run low on supplies, and there were even some soldiers who were marching through the icy, frigid, snow barefoot. As we approached the Delaware River, feelings of doubt crossed my, and I’m sure the other soldier’s minds.
Society lives in a world where people perceives their reality in different ways. In his speech, “This is Water”, David Foster Wallace perceives anger towards how people wards one another. According to Foster Wallace he states,“ Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it.”(Foster Wallace 6) He believes every individual sees themselves as the center of their own universe. Inducting that society puts themselves first in every occasion without thinking about everybody else around them. In this article he represents this idea of different realities by an older fish asking another two young fishes “Morning, boys, how’s the water?”(Foster Wallace
They left by the sunrise and managed to make it far from their houses. All went fine until Jake suddenly screamed… He had fell from a steep and hurt his ankle.
The runners of sled kept cutting through the powdery snow until Jonas came to an abrupt stop at the bottom of the hill. He was confused as to how my memories were flashing so vividly because he thought they were all forgotten. He thought what he heard coming down the hill was what the Giver had called music. Jonas had Gabe clenched in his arms then he looked up to see a beautifully and vibrant colored city. He could tell Gabe saw all the colors with the decorations that they had used. He was interested because he had never seen all these colors before.
"I feel ordinary. Inside. But I know ordinary kids don't make other ordinary kids run away
The first thing to see, looking away over the water, was a kind of dull line - that was the woods on t'other side; you couldn't make nothing else out; then a pale place in the sky; then more paleness spreading around; then the river softened up away off, and warn't black any more, but gray; you could see little dark spots drifting along ever so far away-trading-scows, and such things; and long black streaks-rafts ... and by and by you could see a streak on the water which you know by the look of the streak that there's a snag there in a swift current which breaks on it and makes that streak look that way; and you see the mist curl up off of the water, and the east reddens up.
Have you ever stopped and thought, what would I do if my kid had a disability or was dying? Or ever question, why you act a certain way or if you're strong enough? In the articles, “Notes From a Dragon Mom,” “What We Hunger For,” and “This is Water;” these authors, all share their thoughts on what makes a person act the way they do.
"If you only wanted to see the blue sky, that is all you would see. You could know that bright red bird is there right in front of you, but if you didn't want to see it, you wouldn't."