Monday, September 18, 2023

Working The Current

 Throughout the novel, Ward uses various allusions to water, particularly in relation to how characters look and act. One of the characters most frequently described with water diction is Mam, whose nickname is Saltwater Woman. She's an herbalist who knows all the secrets of the bayou and peaks to Lady Regla, and Yemaya, the goddesses of the ocean and salt water. Despite being deathly ill from cancer, Mam is one of the most warm and nurturing characters in the book. From several flashbacks over the course of the novel, we know that Mam is a healer who uses natural medicines she gathers from the area around her house. Leonie describes her as having "arms with all the life-giving waters of the world"(59). She's married to Pop, whose real name is River, another character with a strong connection to water. Despite being a stoic and quiet man hardened by trauma he experienced in Parchman Prison, he's warm and loving towards his grandchildren. From Richie's sections of the novel, we get more information about Pop's nurturing side. We know that he cared for Richie and tried to protect him from the horrors of Parchman. Mam and Pop, River, and the Salt Water Woman, are two characters who have experienced absolute tragedy and been subjected to so much pain. Their son was lynched. Pop was wrongfully convicted and forced to work on a modern-day plantation of a prison. Mam spent the last few years of her life bedridden with terminal cancer. The two of them have been exposed to more pain than the human soul should be able to stand, and yet, the only two people in Jojo and Kayla's life that have truly cared for them. 

Before Leonie takes the kids away to pick Micheal up from jail, Jojo stops in Mam's room to say goodbye. She begins to tell him about Pop and what she has learned from him over the years they've known each other. She tells Jojo about a conversation they shared long ago in which Pop had told her"[t][heres things that move a man. Like currents of water inside. Things he can't help"(68). Mam then goes on to tell Jojo that Pop taught her "[g]getting grown means learning how to work that current learning when to hold fast when to drop anchor when to let it sweep you up." Mam and Pop have learned to master the current inside of them. They have learned how to withstand a whirlpool of tragedy and suffering without letting it wash them away. I believe Ward uses water as a metaphor for pain. Growing up poor and black in Mississippi is, in most cases, a painful experience. Ward is elucidating a message to her audience about just how painful life can be for people in this area, how they deal with it, and how they don't. Some drown in their pain. Others learn to work the current.



2 comments:

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  2. Water is definitely an important motif that Ward uses to shed insight into the deepest reaches of her characters. A couple of names in the book are derived from water, namely River, the Saltwater Woman, and Parchman. I like your discussion of the first two and how their personalities are shaped by their names and relations to water. Pop’s time in Parchman proves that the name River is deserved; fellow inmates and wardens comment on his steel resolve and ability to “roll with everything like a river” (Ward, 137). The name Parchman holds a unique relation to water, as it is not the name of a character, but rather a figurative and literal purgatory. On the drive up, Jojo wonders what poor man was so thirsty as to give the penitentiary its name. The parched man is seen to be Richie, who bides his sentence and takes extreme solace in his oasis, the aptly named River.
    You also mention that water is a metaphor for pain, and that the ability to “work the current” or remain above water is a powerful coping mechanism for the characters. We see that Pop and Mam use water to process their rough upbringings in the deep south and the death of their son Given. Their seemingly genetic spirituality is what allows them to process their grief, and Leonie’s lack of the gift forces her to turn to addiction. While Pop and Mam learn to work the current in their favor, Leonie is stuck shipwrecked, trying, and ultimately failing, to help her and her children stay afloat.

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