62 pages • 2 hours read
Marian HaleDark Water Rising
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2006A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Systemic Racism Even Amid Tragedy
Content Warning: The novel refers to Black people as “colored,” but this guide will use the term Black to follow the example set by Black scholars, writers, and journalists. The novel contains graphic descriptions of the aftermath of a natural disaster, including loss of life. It references ecological disasters and their devastating effects. The book references and depicts sexism and intense racism and oppression toward Black and Latinx people.
The novel takes place only a few decades after the Civil War and Reconstruction, so racist oppression is a significant social factor in the story. The reader sees the patterns and structures of racism through the experiences of Josiah and Ezra. To build this theme, Hale exposes Seth to double standards, social restrictions, and interpersonal tensions. Ultimately, as the racial difference both collapses and is upheld in the aftermath of the storm, Hale reveals the social segregation to be a construct—or, as Mr. Vedder puts it, “ceremony.”
Though Seth tries hard to befriend Josiah, the other boy is aware of the differences between them and maintains the formality he is expected to use when interacting with a white person. When Seth protests this, Josiah reminds him that things are different for them. The truth of this has a powerful impact on Seth:
His words sucked the air right out of me, leaving me almost too weak to move, but I recognized the truth in them. The very people who went out of their way to make sure I made something of myself, like Papa, Uncle Nate, even Mr. Farrell, were the same ones who kept Josiah right where he was. What I’d asked of him was impossible (115-16).
Seth realizes that there is a double standard. While he and Josiah are the same age and both skilled carpenters, only Seth is expected and encouraged to be successful and independent. Though Seth hates the idea of going to college, the option is not even available for Josiah. During and after the storm, some of the restrictions collapse, revealing racial difference and discrimination to be a social construct. One early example of this is when Mr. Vedder urges Josiah to take a seat, saying “At times like these we can’t stand on ceremony” (86). By “ceremony,” Mr. Vedder means that the division between the races is a performance of difference, a set of rules for interaction that intentionally constructs Black people as “less than” white people in some way. Even Mr. Vedder’s comment, however, is dismissive; he is making the severe oppression Josiah faces sound trivial by calling it simply “ceremony” when in reality it is embedded in every aspect of society. Although Mr. Vedder recognizes the racism, he takes part in it in a way in this moment. Another example of how easily this “ceremony” collapses is shown when Josiah and Seth are traveling the city:
Doors swung open to the houses that had withstood the storm, and anyone, rich or poor, white or colored, merchant or servant, was welcomed and fed. A woman who’d been carrying water to the men working in her street offered me a ladle and didn’t hesitate to let Josiah drink, too (122).
This further shows that racial difference is performative and collapses when circumstances don’t leave space for it. However, there is also a sense elsewhere in the story that the racism exists even when society is collapsing due to a natural tragedy. It is as if the social system of racism will endure even when so many other social systems have gone away. Josiah and other Black people still experience intense racism in the town even during a tragedy that supposedly levels hierarchies and makes everyone equal; at a time when everyone is supposed to unify, the racism exists. Unity in the face of natural catastrophe itself is a privilege of white people.
The novel uses the threat of violence in the aftermath of the storm to further develop the theme of racist oppression. Though Seth is in danger from disease and of potentially being pressed into one of the work gangs, he is not in danger of being seen as a criminal or looter. Because of Josiah’s race, he is highly likely to be shot and killed if someone suspects him of criminal behavior. The difference in their exposure to violence and danger is evident in Papa and Ezra’s different reactions to Seth and Josiah’s travels through the city:
Even in the half-light I could see the hesitancy in Ezra’s farewell, the uncertainty about his grandson’s safety. I stole a quick look at Papa, and though I saw many things, fear for his son was not one of them (140).
This shows that Ezra is aware that people will see Josiah as a looter and not Seth. Historically, “looting” is a term that has been applied to the actions of people of color in the wake of a disaster but not to similar actions by white people. For example, Seth and his brothers comb through the debris, take good lumber, and even take four windows but are not accused of “looting,” despite openly taking and using things that don’t belong to them.
Seth’s exposure to these double standards and differences in social treatment between himself and Josiah helps him to see a full picture of racial discrimination. As a young man on the cusp of adulthood, who strains at the authority of his father, Seth’s empathetic nature makes it easier for him to understand the plight of Black people in his time:
It was easy to see [Ezra] was worried, but I’d seen something else, too, something I suspected might come from never being master of your own fate. After straining at Papa’s leash for so long, that sort of thing wasn’t hard for me to recognize, but unlike Ezra and Josiah, I knew my life would change (165).
This passage compares Seth’s status under his father’s thumb to Josiah and Ezra’s under society; Seth recognizes it as unfair and senseless and does what he can to support Josiah and Ezra and improve their lives. Again, however, even though Seth may be well-meaning, he does not understand the full effect of racist oppression on these two men. By comparing his own youth to their experience in society, he is trivializing the racism and perpetuating the system to a degree.
Individual and Collective Trauma and Healing
Seth and the other survivors of the hurricane experience severe trauma, both during the life-threatening storm and in the aftermath. The novel does not shy away from showing the horrors of the storm, the death toll, and the exposure to horrific sights. In exposing the reader to these horrors, Hale develops Seth’s experience and helps the reader to understand Seth’s trauma. However, Hale also uses the mystery of Josiah’s experience on the barge to allow Seth to contemplate the effects of trauma on the individual. The novel shows people’s resilience primarily by depicting grief-stricken and traumatized people continuing to function and work for their communities despite their fear and sadness. Examples of this include Ella Rose, who suppresses her grief, and Aunt Julia, who mourns but keeps her feelings private so that she can continue to support the others. Hale depicts trauma on an individual level and on a social level; she also points to the traumatic impact of natural disasters at a time when climate change is increasing their rate of occurrence and in the year after Hurricane Katrina.
Seth acknowledges his own trauma, but much of his contemplation on the subject comes as a result of Josiah’s time on the body gang. He doesn’t press Josiah to share the details, knowing they must be painful, but he carefully monitors the other boy, looking for signs that the trauma is passing or processing:
Josiah hadn’t said much since he’d gotten home from the barge, and I still wasn’t sure what to do about it, or if I should do anything about it. I’d been careful not to push his thoughts back to those dark places. . . He frowned, looking hard at the job we’d just finished, but the corners of his mouth soon lifted. That smile was the first sign I’d seen that maybe a small portion of his gruesome night in the gulf might be behind him (184).
This passage shows not only that trauma can have an ongoing effect on a person but also that people are able to heal and move past it. Though Josiah saw and was forced to do deeply awful things that night, with time he is able to move out of the darkness of the experience. Although Hale depicts many moments of trauma that likely will not heal or that will take years to heal, this is a moment showing a possible healing in a small way, even if the totality of these events could impact Josiah for life.
The novel further demonstrates the effects of trauma and the resilience of people on the New Year’s Eve scene at the beach. For the first time since the storm, the community is able to come together and mourn collectively, acknowledging their immense loss and the way their lives changed so radically. Seth realizes the “truer purpose” of this gathering: it was time for good-byes, to let loose the storm’s bindings” (215). Though these goodbyes helped the community and individuals move forward, Seth knows that the effects of the trauma will linger with him:
I didn’t see how I’d ever be free of the ghosts. I felt them often, just as I did now, close beside me, expectant, whispering around my ears, fingering through the images in my head. They turned from the beach with me that night, walked beside me along the oyster-shell road, and followed me right through the front door and into my bedroom. Even after the house was hushed with sleep, I could still sense them, sitting in shadowy corners, lingering near the windows, waiting (215).
Though Seth and the others are able to move past their trauma to an extent and continue living, Seth understands that the experiences and effects will stay with him for his entire life:
I embraced them all, for I could do nothing else, then I tried to put this haunted piece of myself to rest. It was time to move on, but as I glanced out over the gulf, I knew I’d never truly be free. Dark water would always carry ghosts to me. I’d feel Zach beside me with every nail I hammered; I’d see Toby’s grin in every baseball. Blue gingham, washboards, saws, broken mirrors—these things and more would forever speak to me, and I’d listen. I’d remember (216).
The capacity to see and do horrible things without letting them incapacitate you shows the novels themes of trauma and resilience. Despite the horrible things he saw, Seth is able to incorporate those memories into a way of honoring the dead and, in doing so, finds a way to cope with his trauma. As the book was published the year following Hurricane Katrina, a hurricane that also devastated a city on the gulf, Hale suggests that, even though these events will stay with the survivors for life, they might be able to heal from them in a way. The survivors do not need to forget the tragedy but can possibly heal from it. These last moments attempt to depict a society that will heal on an individual level, which will in turn lead to healing on a social level.
Similarly, Ella Rose is able to embrace her new family and overcome the grief of her father’s loss. Josiah, too, is able to soothe his trauma somewhat through work and by the end of the novel can sit peacefully on the roof with Seth, looking over the re-building city together. The novel shows some extremely upsetting things—the death of the mother and small child, the twin five-year-old boys, intense racist oppression, and Sarah Louise’s fate—to help the reader understand how deeply traumatizing the experience was. By allowing the characters to heal and move forward in a small way, the novel asserts that the human spirit is resilient and can recover from even the most difficult experiences. There is emphasis on people needing to come together to heal from this trauma, however; even though people will need to heal on an individual level to heal on a societal one, this healing will come by way of the community coming together, of supporting each other in this rebuilding process.
The Contribution of Different Forms of Labor to the Community
The novel compares physical and intellectual kinds of work, contrasting carpentry with medicine in particular, to show that some types of labor are for some people while other types are for other people. In the novel, everyone has to contribute their part to the community, regardless of what their skills or specialties may be. Though Seth acknowledges that some may be well suited for college and a professional job, he yearns to do a different kind of work: hands-on physical labor. Through Seth’s perspective on his and Papa’s differing goals for his future, the novel asserts that there is, for Seth, a nobility and value to physical labor.
Much of this theme is developed in Seth’s reflections on the expectation that he will go to college and become a doctor: “Papa already knew that working under a blue sky, shaping raw lumber into walls and doors, roofs and staircases, was all I’d ever wanted. But he’d also been clear about what he wanted for his sons” (4). Seth hates the idea of being a doctor, which surprises Ben, who’d heard that Seth was also going into medicine. Seth tells him, “My father is the one planning that career. I’m going to be a carpenter” (24). Though Seth describes medicine as working with “blood and guts,” he also, in his prejudice, associates it with passivity, reflecting that his brother Lucas may have the calling to medicine, too: “I’d seen him pluck ants and June bugs from his bathwater because he couldn’t stand to see them drown. And this spring, he’d nursed a newborn orphaned mouse he’d found in the brush behind the house” (15). These moments continue to reflect Seth’s prejudices and feel connected to his sexism, too, as he offensively believes caring for children and others is gendered work. By the end of the novel, as he is forced to care for the community in a way, he learns that all forms of labor when helping others are forms of caring and understands that everyone has their own role to contribute to rebuilding and that all such roles are equal.
In contrast, Seth, in his prejudice and before the novel’s end, sees carpentry work as freeing. He refers to carpentry as, “the kind of work a man could be proud of” and wonders about his father’s smile when he returns home from his first day, asking himself, “Was he proud that I’d done a man’s work today, or just glad that I was saving towards college?” (34, 47). For Seth, physical labor is more aspirational and freeing than college-educated work like doctoring or lawyering. This is shown in his joy when he finds out that Nate and Papa have arranged a job for him:
For weeks I’d been stewing in my own misery, and now, in just four days, I’d be working as a real carpenter. This was my chance to prove to Papa that I had talent, to make him realize that I needed to work with my hands—outside where I could breathe (20).
Here, Seth describes physical labor not just as being freeing but also as requiring talent and skill, making it equal to intellectual jobs while also having the benefits of working outdoors and with one’s hands. Seth reveals his sexism and prejudice throughout the novel in his thoughts on carpentry, but he also, by the novel’s end, learns that each person has their role to contribute and that different forms of labor are good for different people. All labor, when contributed to the community, is equal, regardless of one’s specialties.
The reader sees Seth’s true investment in carpentry in the scenes where he works. For example, on his first day working with Zach, Seth describes the day as passing “without notice”: “Like chickens picking off June bugs, we’d finished one job after another, and the hours had disappeared clean and without notice. I looked back, surprised at what we’d accomplished. I think Mr. Farrell was too” (49). This passage demonstrates that Seth loves the work so much that he can lose himself in it, and long days of physical labor pass in a blur of satisfaction and success. Another hard worker in the text, Ezra, is also held up by the narrative as noble and worthy of respect. In the aftermath of the storm, Mama finds him “working by candlelight” in the early morning, “scraping dried mud off the floors, and as soon as the sky brightened a bit, he headed off to finish up the outhouse” (161). Seth notes that “Aunt Julia is lucky to have him,” and Mama agrees, saying Ezra, “sure deserves more than his lot in life” (162). Both Ezra and Josiah are shown as hard workers despite the little incentive there is for them to be so in a racist society—no matter how hard they work, their society will not allow them to prosper and become fully independent. It is important that while Seth views carpentry as freeing, Josiah and Ezra will experience no freedom from this. They do it simply to help and do a good job, even though there will be little to no return for them.
Importantly, it is also the hard work of rebuilding the family home that helps Seth discover his self-confidence and complete the transition from adolescence to adulthood. By stepping into Papa’s shoes and completing the labor of rebuilding, Seth discovers a confidence in his own abilities that enables him to assert his own plans for his future. At the same time, seeing how hard Seth worked, his commitment to the work, and the skill he brought to the task helped Papa to accept that Seth had truly become an adult and an equal. This recognition leads to Papa’s decision to start a business together. Throughout the novel, physical labor, for Seth, is depicted as both necessary and noble. By contrasting the accepted value of education with the often unacknowledged value of physical work, Hale disrupts a narrative that privileges white-collar work while devaluing blue-collar work. The novel depicts carpentry as a calling, a passion, a labor of love, and a job that a man can be proud to work.
