Average Waves In Unprotected Waters Summary

Throughout the short story, “Average Waves in Unprotected Waters”, by Anne Tyler, there is a range of emotions that assist in making the story so compelling. Anne Tyler uses her pessimism for the best by writing this surreal piece about a mother who sacrificed most of her life caring for her handicapped son and tending to his every need. The mother then decides it is time to live her life and care for herself more. To do so, she takes her son, Arnold, to a state hospital where they will take the responsibility of caring for him and his disabilities. While reading, it is easy to sense Tyler’s somewhat cynical writing style, which is what helps to make the short story so enjoyable to read.

Without reading any other pieces by Anne Tyler, it would be appropriate to assume that she is pessimistic because of her lack of sensitivity and recurring attention to negative detail. While Bet is on the …show more content…
While Bet is thinking back to these times, her mind wanders into the subject of whose “fault” it is that Arnold turned out the way he did. “She’d had moments herself of picturing some kind of evil gene in her husband's ordinary stocky body- a dark little egg like a black jelly bean she imagined it. All his fault. But other times she was sure the gene was her’s. It seemed so natural; she never could do anything as well as most people.” This was shocking to me because it is easy to be ignorant and just assume that all parents love everything about their children, all the way down to their worst flaw. However, Bet throws the reader for a loop by expressing a dark repugnance for her son’s impairment. By