Close to the Water's Edge

Close to the water's edge

The text is chronological following a 19-year old boy from Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is getting straight A's in school and are going to study at Harvard university. At the time where the story takes place, he is visiting his mom and her new husband at their penthouse by the beach. His new stepfather Richard is a millionaire who is very mean and likes to tease. The time span is coursed over an evening, his birthday and we're following his thoughts from a third person narrator. There are no flash backs in the story, but we are told a story from his grandmothers younger days, that he is giving a lot of thoughts, maybe because this grandmother did not take a chance and felt like she didn't have a choice, and this he is considering because the is always a choice and maybe he shouldn't do what other people expect from him. This third person narrator that tells the story from the outside, but with an insight of his thoughts, gives us a chance to know how he is responding to his mother's and stepfather's discussions.

This penthouse he is staying at is at the beach, where he uses the opportunity to go swimming in the evenings to clear his thoughts. It's like he doesn't fit into this environment where the rich are and the upper class is living. Richard is teasing on him a lot even though he is getting good grades, accepted into Harvard and is a good young man. He is giving him a pink birthday cake, telling stories about the president wanting queers into the military and asking him of his opinion to that, but before he gets to answer Richard says that we did not win world war 2 because of queers in the military. Also he refers to that there must be some fine women up there, but he responds that they accept students on the basis of intelligence. Richard continuous with teasing him about why he never brings girls home, while his mom keep telling him to back off and leave him alone. She is very proud of him and tells him all the time. We don't get much information about the characters, but gathering all this, there is a conclusion, that this young boy, could be homosexual. He is slightly referring to it at the end of the text, where we are told that he says to himself that he would never get married.

The text is easy to read, and the writer doesn't use a lot of foreign words. He includes a little bit of direct speech, but not a lot, only during the dinner, where there is a conversation between the 3 of them. Also he uses it when he refers to an earlier conversation from his grandmothers younger days. The text is present so we don't get to know much about his past, and what he has been though, but we are told things like, he already fear for this dinner, because it's always like that. Even though his mom tells Richard to not "bring it up today" (l.24) Again, it ends like that.

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