Determinism In We Live In Water By Jess Walter

“We Live in Water,” by Jess Walter, is a dark but brilliantly written twofold narrative short story. On the surface, the story is about a series of bad decisions that lead to a brutal murder of Oren Dessens, a World War II veteran in northern Idaho in 1958; and his son, Michael’s search for his father 34 years later in 1992. After Oren’s wife left him because he cheated on her with Bannen’s wife, Michael, Oren’s son, comes to live with him and the first question he asks his father consistently is “Do we lived in water?” The story alternate between year 1958 and 1992 where Michael searches for his father 34 years later after that one faithful night. Oren doesn’t understand what the kid meant till his last moment before he has to say goodbye …show more content…
Holman Hugh points out in his “Handbook to Literature” that determinism is “the belief that all apparent acts of the will are actually the result of determine them.” All things living or dead and its fate depending on one force that controlled it all. In the story “We Live in Water,” the story the image of water represent the determinism. The image of an aquarium as a representing for the predetermined things in life repeat multiple times in the story. When Michael found the aquarium inside Flett’s basement Oren finally understand the meaning of his question. Michael wants to know if they are like fish and live in water. The fishes swim to the end of its “blue world” face an “impassable turn, go around and turn again.” (Walter 39) The fish here is being compare to human. The life is the water the fish is swimming in, it’s determine how far and how deep one can go. These “endless, invisible barrier” of life is also mentioned throughout the story like in the beginning of the story where Oren Dessen memories of that one morning on the aircraft carrier “in every direction, seemed like bands of varying blue, except for a thin gray line where the sea and sky met.”(Walter 17). The endless sky and sea is like this infinite barrier, the end can be perceive but it’s not crossable. What if it’s not a coincidence for Oren and Michael to have a bad marriage? Michael might be predetermine in his gene to be a cheater. A similar conclusion can be said for Tim Flett. The reason that Tim Flett has those diseases that gave him a handicapped life might be in his gene. Again the analogy of water and fish tank appears again in the room where Tim Flett stay at the end of his life. All the decors inside the room represent the decors in a fish tank, with three big windows look out to the bay represent the fish