The Symbolism Of Water In Annie John By Jamaica Kincaid
In the novel, Annie John, by Jamaica Kincaid, what water represents in the novel is a sense of displeasure, and this is shown throughout multiple areas in the book. When AJ is told to write an autobiographical essay by Miss Nelson in class, she reads it out loud to the class and in one particular moment, she recalls, “I was glad to see her and started jumping up and down and waving to her. Still she didn’t see me, and then I started to cry, for it dawned on me that, with all that water between us and I being unable to swim, my mother could stay there forever” (Kincaid 44).
This quote precisely shows how water can be representative of a force stopping someone from reaching their goals, and this explains how water represents a sense of displeasure, as when a person cannot meet a goal, in this case for AJ, her mother, they are displeased, shown by AJs tears. Right after AJs mother scolds her for being an embarrassment, AJ is overwhelmed and when the word slut (in patois) was repeated over and over to her, she suddenly “felt as if I were drowning in a well but instead of the well being filled with water it was filled with the word ‘slut’, and it was pouring in through my eyes, my ears, my nostrils, my mouth” (Kincaid 102). Here, she was engulfed by water, or rather, by the word slut being reiterated to her over and over, she was figuratively unable to escape from her despair, and so this quote reinforces water representing a sense of displeasure, as being drowned by the word “slut”, to Annie, said to her by her own mother, was unbearable.
At the end of the book, when Annie is leaving her hometown Antigua for England to study as a nurse, on the ship to England she thinks, “They made an unexpected sound, as if a vessel filled with liquid had been placed on its side and now was slowly emptying out” (Kincaid 148). The liquid/water here is symbolic of the frustrations of her home and life, because those are what lead her to decide to leave Antigua in the first place. Now that she is in the process of finally leaving and having the chance to start a new life, causing her frustrations to slowly go away, shown by the vessel “emptying out”, this explains and adds on to how water represents a sense of displeasure in the novel, Annie John, by Jamaica Kincaid.
