“Eighty percent of adolescents in psychiatric hospitals come from broken homes” (Photius). This statistic shows how the conditions an individual has to endure can affect the outcome of that individual’s life. In Jesse Walters book, "We Live in Water" he gives readers examples of how an individual’s opportunity to progress or develop in life can be hindered by the surroundings they have to endure. The Title "We Live in Water" relates to a fish living in a fish tank, because no matter how many times that fish may swim to the glass of the tank it cannot change the outcome it has to suffer. In the collection, “We Live in Water”, two specific short stories, "Thief" and "We live in Water" shows readers how the environment and circumstances people …show more content…
Walter’s characters as described in his short stories can be viewed as troubled offspring; Each of Jesse Walter’s characters represent events that have occurred in his life, like child abandonment, poverty, or being confined to the regions of society. However, none of these characters in the short stories ever make a full recovery. “A study of 1,977 children age 3 and older living with a residential father or father figure found that children living with married biological parents had significantly fewer externalizing and internalizing behavioral problems than children living with at least one non-biological parent” (Fathers), proves that some individuals cannot control the circumstances they are forced to face, but they still have to live with it. The kids living with one or less biological parent have no choice, because they simply cannot provide the necessities they need to survive on their own. So the behavior problems they encounter is basically unavoidable given the fact they have nowhere else to go. In the short story, “Thief”, the father suspects one of his kids of stealing from the family’s vacation fund, but the father also stole from his family’s vacation fund when he was a kid. The quote, “Wayne did it only once, stole from the Vacation Fund” (Walter 49), proves how the situations an individual is forced to face can result in that individual making choices that may not be right. The father, Wayne stole from his family’s vacation fund because his family was poverty stricken, which doesn’t make it okay but gives some logic to the reason. Now that Wayne is an adult, and has to provide for his family he clearly sees the motive behind the family’s vacation fund thief. By allowing readers to see that “The father works rotating shifts at a dying aluminum plant-day, swing, graveyard-