Waking up alone, without any considerable optimism for the day ahead and lacking close relationships with the people in a new town, it is important to find a place where one can feel free from the struggles surrounding them. This is a daily longing for Fatou, a character from Zadie Smith’s short story “Embassy of Cambodia.” Throughout the story, Fatou frequently faces prejudices and racial inferiority, which later contribute to her feelings of worthlessness and isolation. Although she feels unvalued by society, her habit of consistently going to the health center sparks liveliness, a sense of freedom, and confidence within herself. Through her changes of attitude and confidence, Fatou’s frequent swims at the health center illustrate the sense
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Smith’s incorporation of water into the short story presents Fatou feeling liberated as she is cleansed anew when she swims. When trying to convince Andrew to join her in the pool, Fatou announces, “It’s so warm. Like a bath” (Smith 20). The swim can be related to a bath beyond its temperature. Fatou’s cleansing in the bath parallels her desire to wash away the frustration of injustice and personal struggles. Since Fatou wants to escape the prejudices and injustices that her skin color and social class brings, she decides to get baptized to feel an everlasting separation from what holds her back from fully living. Through baptism, she feels like she is accepted in to the community, and just as a religious baptism is freeing from original sin, she is being freed from her difficulties and sins. When remembering her past in Carib Beach, the narrator describes that “at the time—though she was not then a member of that …show more content…
The water gives her a confidence and also emancipates her from the inferior feeling she experiences when she is outside of the pool. Smith introduces Fatou’s superiority in the pool as Fatou “spots these big men, paddling frantically like babies, struggling simply to stay afloat,” and as a reaction, “she prides herself on her own abilities, having taught herself to swim” (2). In this aspect of the story, Fatou, for the first time, not only feels confident and proud of herself, but finally has the chance to feel superior than the others surrounding her. Although the bystander exits the Jacuzzi upon her entering of it, she still feels confident with her right to enter the same pool as everyone else. In addition to feeling confident in her abilities to swim because of experience, Fatou “is often the youngest person in the pool by several decades” (2). Smith implies that Fatou is achieving more at a young age and is naturally talented above the others. Fatou not only succeeds over the others in the pool because of her natural talent, but also because of her mental images that cause her to surpass others in the pool. For example, “thinking about the Devil now made her swimming fast and angry, and for a while she easily lapped the young white man in the lane next to hers, the faster lane” (14). Fatou proves how she can control her talent by
Smith’s incorporation of water into the short story presents Fatou feeling liberated as she is cleansed anew when she swims. When trying to convince Andrew to join her in the pool, Fatou announces, “It’s so warm. Like a bath” (Smith 20). The swim can be related to a bath beyond its temperature. Fatou’s cleansing in the bath parallels her desire to wash away the frustration of injustice and personal struggles. Since Fatou wants to escape the prejudices and injustices that her skin color and social class brings, she decides to get baptized to feel an everlasting separation from what holds her back from fully living. Through baptism, she feels like she is accepted in to the community, and just as a religious baptism is freeing from original sin, she is being freed from her difficulties and sins. When remembering her past in Carib Beach, the narrator describes that “at the time—though she was not then a member of that …show more content…
The water gives her a confidence and also emancipates her from the inferior feeling she experiences when she is outside of the pool. Smith introduces Fatou’s superiority in the pool as Fatou “spots these big men, paddling frantically like babies, struggling simply to stay afloat,” and as a reaction, “she prides herself on her own abilities, having taught herself to swim” (2). In this aspect of the story, Fatou, for the first time, not only feels confident and proud of herself, but finally has the chance to feel superior than the others surrounding her. Although the bystander exits the Jacuzzi upon her entering of it, she still feels confident with her right to enter the same pool as everyone else. In addition to feeling confident in her abilities to swim because of experience, Fatou “is often the youngest person in the pool by several decades” (2). Smith implies that Fatou is achieving more at a young age and is naturally talented above the others. Fatou not only succeeds over the others in the pool because of her natural talent, but also because of her mental images that cause her to surpass others in the pool. For example, “thinking about the Devil now made her swimming fast and angry, and for a while she easily lapped the young white man in the lane next to hers, the faster lane” (14). Fatou proves how she can control her talent by