Close to the Waters Edge

In our modern lives we have to form our own identity. We need to make a lot of choices concerning who we are and how we would like our lives to develop. Our identity is greatly affected by our childhood. The choices made by our parents and their parents are probably the most important choices ever made for us. The few people who rise in the social hierarchy are a proof of this. The short story 'Close to the Water's Edge' by Claire Keegan from 2007 is about the importance of our foundations.

The mother in short story lives on the Texas coast with his husband, Richard. After the divorce with the young boy's father, she had met Richard, and she only married him because of the young boy . In the story she is being pictured as a materialist. The clothes she wears are expensive and on the restaurant she orders turbot, so she really enjoy that she's now rich. The American dream is important to the mother. She is a pig-farmer daughter and now her boy goes to Harvard University, and she says to her boy, that if he play his cards right, all the stuff she and Richard has now, can be his someday .

Richard is a Republican and a man of humble origins . He owns the complex they live in, and has made his money from real estate and export. During the dinner at the restaurant Richard talks about Clinton, and if he is elected as president he will let queers into the military. That's an example of his old fashion way of thinking. Richard is a very traditional and conservative man, and he has lived out the American dream. The relationship between Richard and the mother is tensed, and in the story you get the felling, that they are arguing a lot, because it seems so natural to the young boy. Richard also has a tensed relationship to the young boy. They don't really seem to get along, and the only thing they have in common is that they have a relationship to the mother. Richard does not care for the boy, and doesn't react as a father figure, when he is being told; the young boy is the top of his class. At the same time the boy is reacting on the things the millionaire, his stepfather, says. The young boy wants to say something, when the stepfather is talking about the girls, and how they must be around him like flies , but in respect to his mother he doesn't. The mother and son relationship in the story is strange. The mother must know that there is something about the boy, but she is ignoring it, but then again the boy just hide it. The relationship is superficial, because the mother and son both deny the reality.

The young boy is visiting his mother, and goes at Harvard University in Cambridge. It's his birthday, and he is turning twenty-one. He is an idealist, because he does not care about fine clothes and champagne. In Cambridge he is wearing a T-shirt and jeans, and he drinks beer . He isn't himself when he's around his mother and her husband. At the restaurant a birthday