Close to the water’s edge
There are many themes in this story. The most relevant themes are expectations for the lives of others, insecurity, sexual insecurity. Those themes to suits the main character in the text. The main character has a lot expectation in his live, likes his mother. Since his mother didn’t live out her dreams, she’s trying to live her life trough her son’s life.
Close to the water’s edge is told with a 3rd person narrator and focuses on such themes as expectations, insecurity and family issues. The main character in the story is called ‘’Harvard. We do not get the main character's real name, but the boy’s stepfather, calls him ‘’Harvard’’, because he’s a student at Harvard university. ‘’Harvard’’ has left the university to come home to Florida to celebrate his 19th birthday with his family. ‘’Harvard’s’’ stepfather is a millionaire, and we get the impression that ‘’Harvard’s’’ mother only married the stepfather because of his money.
‘’You play your cards right and this could all be yours someday” she says.”He’s got no kids. You wonder why I married him, but I was thinking of you all along”
Harvard doesn’t want to have all these goodies and power the money can bring him. He dislikes the felling of being better than his fellow people. Harvard cannot stand the expensive champagne and expensive cigars, as his stepfather always has around him. ‘’Harvard’’ is not a boy who fits the life as a rich man. Harvard enjoy the small intimate moments in life, such as drinking a beer with his classmates at a bar on a Friday night. The cold cufflinks as he got from his grandmother. The cufflinks are made of gold, but one day the steel underneath appears. The steel appears as the main character's real sexuality appears. The gold on the cufflinks symbolizes the main character’s wealthy stepfather. When the stepfather dies, the main charactor will get all his money. But the steel from the cufflinks is worth more than the gold, because you rather want to have a real identity and don’t live in a lie than being rich.

”She knots the silk into an unnecessarily tight bow.”
I think this is a symbol of how ‘’Harvard’s´´ mother sees him. The mother wants him to be a certain type: The type that goes to Harvard and has a fine education. The type who enjoys being rich, and can get anything you like. She is pushing him in that direction and she is doing it by force and power. The bow is too tight and the same are the limits of ‘’Harvard’s’’ freedom to be who he wants to be.
Her mother and grandmother have both been in a marriage where there was no love involved. They've both been in a relationship only for the money and to make others happy. It's the same with Harvard. He also lives a life where he does everything to make his family happy with him.
“It is a pink cake, the pinkest cake the young man has ever seen, like a cake you’d have at a christening party for twin girls. The millionaire is grinning”
I am convinced that the stepfather by Harvard's gay. The stepfather often makes jokes about it, and he always asks questions about his sexuality. At Harvard's birthday, the stepfather ordered a pink cake, which is a sign that the stepfather suspect that he is gay and to make fun of it.
‘’He stays out on the beach and through his shades watches the bathers, the procession of young men with washboard bellies walking the strand.’’
The first he describes in this session are the young men with washboard bellies. And after that he describes the women. If you were not gay, the first thing you noticed was the beautiful women in bikinis and not the men with washboard bellies. Apart from this, you can make it clear that Harvard is gay. No men will comment on other men's washboard before they noticed women in bikinis.
Harvard is trying to get an education; he also tries to swim in the big ocean. All of this is his grandmother's dreams that she never had outlived. But now Harvard is trying to live them out.
The ending of this story, I think is a symbol of getting cleaned and the start of a new life.
‘’He feels dirty, smells the cigar smoke on his clothes’’
The way he strips down before he goes in the water, I think, is a confession of him being gay. But it does not end with that, it ends up that he almost got killed by the big waves who pulls him down under the water. I think the big waves symbolize his mother’s and his stepfather’s view on the whole gay situation. They got to make sure that ‘’Harvard’’ won’t outlive his dreams. He struggles a lot in the water, but finally he got to the shore, tired and frightened. When he arrived in safety on the shore, he thought of the first people who crawled out of the sea, how brave as they might have been. He wished he had the courage of these people, but he has not. The only thing he learned after this terrible trip in the sea, is that he cannot be proud of whom he is. It reminded him that he actually just wanted to be like everyone else.

Mikkel Sally Jørgensen – 2.u, ÅSG

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