18. If She Comes Up, It’s Baptism

1. 18. If She Comes Up, It’s Baptism Qiwei Li 6th period English September 2011

2. Character drowning… A character going under water has more than surface meanings. ◆ “Rescue might suggest passivity, good fortune, indebtedness”(Foster 153). ◇ “The piece of driftwood raises issues of luck and coincidence”(Foster 153).

3. A New Identity (Ordinary People by Judith Guest) Two brothers go sailing, a storm comes and one drowns. - It is younger brother “Conrad, the one who should never survive, [that] survives" (Foster 154). - Because he was the one that should have died in the storm, Conrad is alive all over again.

4. (Identity continued) • “Conrad we met in the book is not the same Conrad we would have met before the storm”(Foster 154). • But the world only knows him as the baby brother. “Being born is painful”(Foster 155).

5. Baptism In a way, the character that survived a drowning got baptized, because he becomes a new person. Baptism is “death and rebirth through the medium of water”(Foster 155).

6. Death by Water (Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich) Some characters are not meant to survive the water. + Henry Jr. is a veteran suffering with post dramatic stress disorder + At one scene, he walks into a flooded stream, “he says, rather simply, that his boots are filling with water, and then he’s gone”(Foster 156).

7. (Death continued) “Henry has been drowning in life ever since he came back from the war ---- he can’t adjust, can’t form relationships, can’t leave his nightmares behind…he’s already lost”(Foster 156). HENRY CHOSETO DIE. Drowning was just a way to take the actual character out of the story

8. In Relation to Great Expectations Miss Havisham began to die when her fiance left her. She stopped “…the watch and the clock, a long time ago”(Dickens 62). She stopped changing clothes, “…the silk stocking on [her foot], once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged”(Dickens 62). All those things she has done has been stopping her life inside. It shows outside too, “not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked more like a shroud”(Dickens 62). Miss Havisham jumping into fire eventually ending her life was like Henry walking into the flooded river. They chose to go in, life became too much.

9. Everyday Life “One cannot step into the same river twice”. Remember that no situations are identical in life. Everything is constantly changing, and we will always have new challenges.

10. Works Cited • Dickens, Charles. Great Expecations. Clayton: Preswick House, 2005. Print. • Foster, Thomas C. How to Read Literature Like a Professor. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, Inc., 2003. Print.