Black Water-Joyce Carol Oates

A book that demonstrates despondency in the female sex is Black Water. The main characters in this novel are Kelly Kelleher, the Senator, and Buffy St. John. When the novel starts out, the Senator is driving a car off of the island with Kelly in the passenger seat holding an alcoholic drink, which the Senator has been sipping. Kelly suggests that the Senator is lost. Right as she does so, the car plummets into the dark water and begins to choke them and she begins to reflect on her life previously (Oates, Black 6). Kelly’s relationship with her parents is strained because they want her to be successful. She recalls how they had an unhealthy relationship, “her father had sometimes driven after his and her mother’s mysterious disagreements,” shows she is used to people running away from their problems (16). Kelly is searching for love because of how insecure she is about herself. The young adult was born with an imbalance in her eyes and her father considered it to be an abnormality. “Daddy could scarcely bear to look at his darling little girl sometimes,” (23). Her ex-boyfriend also caused her to attempt suicide and made her fall into a deep depression. Her ex, that she refuses to say his name, also made her develop an eating disorder, but in a way she developed it to punish herself (51). Her relationship with the Senator began as the two of them being total strangers. She liked him because he showed her attention and he liked her because he could exercise control over her, like when he made her bring a drink for the ride home and brushes off her opinions. It is obvious that it is all lust and no love because during the miserable time of the accident he abandons her (65). The novel that shifts to part two, where Kelly is trapped in the car and is physically and mentally hurt by the incident. She still has false hope as she tells herself, “He was gone but would come back to save her,” (69). Kelly then begins to go through the events that have lead up to this tragic incident, repeating them in her mind. It in the last chapter of the book that Kelly comes to terms with her death, she starts to see her parents but they are old and act like they do not recognize her, and as she contemplates this the black water fills her lungs and she dies.

Her death seems to be her ignorance to feminism and the ability to be independent. Richard Bausch wrote his professional critique on how a man with authority is on the prowl for susceptible women. The Senator easily saw Kelly as a victim; he even stays anonymous to her so there will be no strings attached (Bausch 1). Oates uses flashbacks to show the reader how she got to this situation, using childhood memories to trigger emotion and the refrain of “As the black water filled her lungs, and she died” (2). Irony also occurs in Black Water because we are made to see the spectacle of the situation. It’s ironic because the Senator wanted to keep this quiet but it ended up in tabloids, cock-tail party speculations, or history books (2). The relationship portrayed between men and women in this book is men seeing women as sexual goals. Kelly was the eligible person because of her past and her personality traits portrayed her as weak and downcast. This event occurred in real life, it happened on Chappaquiddick Island with Mary Jo Kopechne in 1969. Oates found the story quite fascinating and was sympathetic towards these feeble feminine figures and wrote about it in a somewhat mythical way (3).

The book Black Water was unusually written but had a powerful message behind it with some hidden meanings. One of the hidden meanings being her birth name being Elizabeth Anne Kelleher and her nickname Kelly and how they reflect different personalities. Kelly is weak, dependent, and looking for a healing, while Elizabeth was strong and well liked (Oates, Black 73). It is obvious that the Senator doesn’t see Kelly anything more than a sexual conquest. He drives recklessly trying to get to their next destination (1), uses her as leverage to get out of the crashed car (64), and leaves her there to die by herself because he did not care about anything other than a physical relationship with Kelly. Another hidden meaning is when Kelly references the political career of Governor Dukaki’s election and how they didn’t know it was doomed until the final weeks. This relates to Kelly because she thought things were finally going fine until the final minutes that she spent drowning in the car (42). A literary technique that was used in this piece of literature was flashbacks, which were used throughout the entire novel and made it hard to comprehend at times, and they occurred near the end of the chapter and usually ended with her drowning. The themes that can be taken from the story are desperation, despondency, and weakness in the female model. The black water that is often referenced in the novel symbolizes her past coming back to drown her, while the Senator represents all the men in her life. Her ex trying to control her life and her father trying to control her future can be seen in the Senator and his invasive personality. All of these techniques tie into the dismal story to make it powerful.