Into the Water

Hawkins often uses water-based metaphors for especially strong emotions that characters are feeling. When Mark finds out his secret is out and he must run, he thinks: “It was, he thought, as though he were in deep water, as though he were reaching for something, anything, to save himself” (157). While sifting through Louise’s threats to Nel, Jules feels like “the house seemed to shift, to tilt like” (178). Later on, when describing her own trauma as she goes to confront Robbie, Jules refers to “memories that rose now like driftwood out of water” (251). Louise, unable to process her grief over Katie’s death, observes: “A fissure had opened and guilt seeped through, a trickle at first and then a flood” (139). Just as water can pull people under and overwhelm them, deep, negative emotions can have the same effect. 

Despite Erin’s assertion: “Kids can block it out, trauma like that” (130), childhood trauma actually has a deep, lasting impact. Both Sean and Jules experience considerable trauma as children, and both exhibit signs of PTSD in adulthood. Sean frequently dissociates from the present, requiring practiced movements, such as touching the scar on his arm, to bring him back to the moment. He has flashes of memories that he finds elusive, feeling that he misremembers them, or that he is reliving moments from the night that his father killed his mother. Sean runs from his trauma, trying to evade it rather than address it, which only drives him into further difficulties. Hawkins implies that Sean’s murder of Nel came as an attempt on Sean’s part to push away memories of his mother than Nel wanted to force him to relive.

Jules panics in the presence of threatening men, a reaction that stems from her rape at age 13. She has difficulty relating to others, often acting with emotional distance. After she sees Robbie, her rapist, at Nel’s funeral, Jules can no longer sleep. Unlike Sean, Jules eventually faces her trauma head-on, confronting Robbie for Lena’s sake. In doing so, she finds a way to move forward from her trauma, wanting to be strong again for her own sake and for Lena’s.