We Live In Water Analysis

Jess Walter's book entitled “We Live in Water” is very much unlike most books written this day in the sense that it is not one book but rather a collection of thirteen separate, powerful, short stories. In Walter's stories, through relatable characters in stories with hidden connections in often unrelatable ways, he presents themes relating to minorities that are important to all of society. The first of many relatable characters is Wayne “Bit” Bittinger. Bit is a homeless man who at the opening of the story had just recently been kicked out of the catholic shelter he had been staying in due to “drunkenness, fighting, and sacrilege” the former being fictitiously (6). The false accusation came from secretly saving money for what others …show more content…
Owens story Don’t Eat Cat is unambiguously different than Bits story Anything Helps. Owens story is in all basics a story of zombies. In his world, there is a drug floating around on the streets they call Replexin thats turns nearly everyone who uses it into a similar form of the classic flesh eating monster we all know and love. Both Owen's cousin and girlfriend chose to take the drug and that is the idea that Owen struggles with throughout the story. It may be true that Anything helps and Don't Eat Cat are different, but alike with Bit, Owen just wants what brings the most happiness to him. For Bit this was his son, but Owen’s happiness comes from his girlfriend.Again, the difference between those two stories is Bits son was taken from him, Owens girlfriend chose to, for the most part, mentally leave existance and physically leave him. Owen struggles with this, but he knows as well as the reader does that his girlfriend and cousin, among others who took the drug, “Knew what the were doing” (93). Owen struggles for a couple years with all that has happened, but finally decides to give everything he physically had for his everything he desired, for his girlfriend no matter what she has become. Although it's doubtful anyone's girlfriend has turned themselves into a flesh eating monster just to escape, everyone has had or will have that moment of realization where they suddenly see that some things are more important than anything else in life. Sooner or later everyone will give up one thing for something they see as far more valuable or important to them. Walter shows that no matter what that might be: it's okay to pursue it. For most people, the most important things to them are their loved