Wow! What a shocking short story! It does make me question so much about the narrator.

Right on the first paragraph the narrator give us a hint that his best friend Beto is a homosexual. It was there that I started questioning myself, is this a story about prejudice against homosexual? I guess my answer was yes until the end of the story when we’ve learnt that the narrator had a sexual encounter with Beto.

The entire story the narrator makes us curious to understand why he is avoiding his friend Beto. My first guess was that he was mad and ashamed of his friend when he figured out he was gay. However, it turned out that the narrator himself was confused about his sexuality. He turned his fear into angriness against Beto, who cause this confusion in his mind. By avoiding his friend he would also be avoiding this new world he wasn’t prepared to face and was absolutely ashamed of. A good example about this fear is when they were having their second intercourse and they heard a noise. He said, “He was laughing, but I was saying, Fuck this, and getting my clothes on” (1248). His reaction on that moment tell us that he was scared that anyone would know what they have done, he didn’t wanted to get caught. He didn’t wanted anyone to know. Not only the fear of his community to know about it, but also the fear of his father knowing. In The narrator explains throughout the story that he doesn’t have a good relationship with his father and he is even afraid to get hit by him, as we notice on page 1245 when he says, “I don’t know about you, but my pops hits like a motherfucker”.

After reading the entire story, I started to wonder why the narrator chose this title, since nobody literally drowned from the swimming pool.  I believe that the title is related to the narrator situation, like he was drowning in fear. Or maybe it is related to their social and economic situation. We learned in the story that he was a drug dealer and was helping his mom financially. His dad was living in Florida and eventually showed up or called asking for money. Therefore,  drowning here, is more like a feeling of not have an option to change his life. The narrator doesn’t see a different future for himself, as we see exemplified on page 1242 when he says, “I wasn’t like him. I had one year to go in high school, no promises elsewhere”. The narrator doesn’t have any ambitions, being completely different from Beto.

Another important thing to question about this narration, is why he didn’t want to read the book his friend gave to him. Why did he throw away the gift without reading it? I would say that he was trying to get over this situation and forget about everything that happened between them. To read the book would be like he was opening a door that would never be closed again.

I believe Virginia Woolf was as one of the most complex text we’ve read so far, mostly because of her style mixing fiction and lecture. However, it so cleverly written. Even not reading her biography and background, we can notice how intelligent and what an incredible intellect she had with all her quotes about different authors.

In this text, Virginia Woolf developed the idea of women being able to become a fiction writer, and to do so, women needs money, a room of her own and education. Women must have financial independence to make choices for themselves. They must have a room with privacy and silence to develop their ideas, and most of all, they need freedom of time. We all understand that, by the time this text was written, women did not have the same freedom men had. This will lead us to another of her arguments of how men and women differs in society.

Woof developed arguments about how society views women and how it views men. Also, how education is different for both genders. I think a good example from the book is when she mentioned how wealth Men’s College is in comparison to Women’s College that essentially has no money.  Also, on Chapter 1, she exemplified the dinner she had on both Colleges. From the Men’s College the dinner was sophisticated. On the other hand, Women’s College Dinner were the same as saying they were serving leftover meals. It is unquestionable  that education offered for men and women were unequal and absolutely unfair. Women would not  be able to have the same intellect and opportunity to compete with men.

Additionally, Woolf not only pointed out this difference, but she argued about the absurd of how different men and women were treated. A good example is when she was waking on the path of the College campus and the Beadle approached her. What difference would make in society of her walking in the campus where only “Fellows and Scholars” (341) were allowed? That is one of the absurd that she could not agree with.

Another interesting point, so brilliantly and strongly developed in Chapter 3, it’s the story she made up about Shakespeare’ sister. She questioned if Shakespeare had a sister as talented as he was, would she be able to show her work as he did? Of course the answer was no. She stated, “…any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended up her days in a lonely cottage…” (366) which means that any women with such talent would go silent, because to seek this work would be impossible and even tragic for a female. Therefore, Woof is arguing that a lot of art had been lost, because society did not allow women to have that form of expression. Society has suffered immeasurable loss because of all the female voices that got silent.

The narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass is a very inspirational work of art. The narrative, which was written by Frederick Douglass, a slave, is in itself an example of perseverance and strength. It debunked the idea that slaves were not intelligent beings or capable of thought. He proves to be smart even before he knew how to read and write. There are many interesting things in his narrative; particularly when Mr. Auld, his master, finds out that Mrs. Auld has been teaching him the ABCs. His reaction to this event is not what one would expect from a slave. He listened to what Mr. Auld said: “If you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave. (page 250 chapter vi)” And instead of accepting this and conforming to his master’s ideas, he speculated why it would be so bad if he knew how to read. He understood it as a door that had just opened; if his master did not want him to do this, then there must be some advantage for him if he pursued it.

It’s important to keep in mind that he was a slave that clearly had other and more immediate things to care about, like cold nights, hunger and solitude, but instead he focused on learning to read. He was young then and it is debatable if he understood the depths of his condition in society; so it is intriguing that he had this spark within himself that would rather worry about feeding his mind instead of his belly. Frederick had this notion in his head that something great would happen to him if only he had knowledge. He was completely right about that, knowledge frees the mind. One can enslave the body, but can never enslave a free mind. However, it is one thing to know what is going on in society, but another thing to be able to change it. He could not change his condition, even though he knew it well that what people did to him and his fellow slaves was very wrong and inhumane. In his narrative he confessed that “learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing” and that he “envied his fellow-slaves for their stupidity. (page 254)” Now he suffered more than his fellow slaves, because he constantly reminded himself of the degrading position that he occupied.  He wanted to be free, but that seemed like a very distant dream that could not be attained…

Another interesting aspect of his narrative is the way that he does not crucify his masters and their class; much on the contrary, he says that slavery was brutalizing upon both slave and slaveholder. This statement shows again Douglass’ intelligence because it puts slaves and white people on the same level, making whites relate to the slaves. By doing that, white people would want to read the narrative for in the end, propagate the cause. It is easy to acknowledge this because it’s not like slaveholders did not have a choice but to keep black people captive; even if that was the case, if that was the only way to run the plantation, they still could be treated as human beings with dignity. Regardless of what he really felt, this was a smart move; not blaming whites in general and only retelling of some mean slaveholders, he got the rest of the white people to stand with him to save both blacks and whites from the evil institution of slavery.