Olivia Loveless
Oftentimes, the prose of a novel itself can add a significance just as emphatic as the message itself; indeed, it could be argued that the message itself could not be conveyed if not for the intent in the prose to begin with. This is prolifically displayed in Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Open Water, a breathtaking novel abundant in graceful language, aching emotions, and profoundly poignant perspectives. Most prevalent in Nelson’s eloquent style is his masterful use of metaphor. By precisely equipping the instrument of repetition, he guides the reader backwards and forwards throughout his novel, carefully calling back to key foreshadows in his character’s memories. Namely, he uses the concept of rhythm to highlight the importance of personal interpretation, the concept of light to portray desire and the importance of personal growth, and the concept of a joint, a fracture, and a break to display the importance of personal bonds. The significance of these metaphors lies not in a consistency in their meanings, rather, in how Nelson uses the rhythmic repetition of these concepts to emphasize the evolution of the protagonists personal interpretations.
The juxtapositions between the meanings the protagonists apply to the same concepts, namely, here, rhythm, highlight the fluidity of personal interpretation, in that he equates a conformity to rhythm with freedom, and she finds that same freedom in forging her own rhythm. In a moment of self-reflection, the photographer cries in his kitchen, and comments on how his rhythm has faltered, thinking
You’re alone. You don’t feel in rhythm. There’s nothing playing. The music has stopped. A break: also known as a percussion break. A slight pause where the music falls loose from its tightly wound rhythm. You have been going and going and going and now you have decided to slow down, to a halt, and confess. (Nelson 36)
Here, he uses the metaphor of rhythm to represent the momentum of his energy, and naturally compares any deviation from that rhythm to a percussion break. He notes that a lack of internal rhythm gives him a feeling of isolation, or, rather, that isolation interrupts his mental percussion. The protagonist uses this percussive break to imply a sort of involuntary internal shutdown, which makes the use of the word “decided” a telling choice, as it implies a sense of responsibility. A percussive break, specifically, would be a pause in the music deliberately arranged by the composer, which further develops the connections to responsibility and guilt. This conflict highlights the turmoil he feels in solitude. The necessity of the percussion’s rhythm is further illustrated as he remembers a ride home in a train with her, recalling the deep sense of community with a wistful fondness, saying:
There, gathered together, the energy spilled over. One of them began to sing. The percussionist procured a shaker and kept you all in time as you all moved, alone in this train carriage, together, improvising, dancing in protest, moving in joy. You want to ask her if she remembers such freedom. (Nelson 145)
The parallels here show that he finds joy in forming community and that he equates music with freedom. Notably, his time of turmoil occurred within a pause, a lack of rhythm, and his time of peace occurs when making rhythm with others. He highlights that they are “alone in this train carriage, together” using the contrasting nature of those terms to emphasize that he feels most confident in his individual identity when allowing himself to participate in that community. Likewise, the dancer uses music and rhythm as metaphors for her worldview, but the implications of these terms change in her interpretation, thus stabilizing the fluid nature of the metaphor. In a vulnerable moment describing her coping mechanisms, she says:
It’s my space, you know? I’m making space and I’m dancing into the space. I’m like, dancing into the space the drums leave, you know, between the kick and the snare and the hat, where that silence lies, that huge silence, those moments and spaces the drums are asking you to fill. I dance to breathe but often I dance until I’m breathless and sweaty and I can feel all of me, all those parts of me I can’t always feel, I don’t feel like I’m allowed to. It’s my space. I make a little world for myself, and I live. (Nelson 41)
Where the photographer finds anxiety when confronted with a lack of music, the dancer sees silence as an open invitation to form her identity. Rhythm tends to be something straightforward, steady, and fixed. In “dancing into the space the drums leave” she defies rhythm’s inherent consistency and forces the song to conform to her dance, rather than confining her dance to the song. Thus, her interpretation of the metaphor is less about a universal rhythm that one participates in, as he sees it, and more about her refusal to conform to that solitary beat.
Similarly, the concept of light is used as a symbol of desire and inherently reveals the protagonist’s journey of first falling in love with her to falling in love with himself, establishing the fluidity of metaphor through its application to varying circumstances. He watches her in the bar, drunkenly awestruck, mentally ascribing to her the celestial power of being able to bend light at her will, saying, “She reaches up, fingertips grazing the window, as if light is something that can be held [...] And as she comes, she goes, giggling as she rises up to reach for the elegant glow” (Nelson 14). Here, his thoughts portray her as above the intangibility of light, showing how otherworldly both she and this experience are interpreted in his mind, specifically in comparison to himself. In romanticizing so ethereally the mundane experience of sitting by a window, Nelson efficiently displays how love and desire can influence one’s perception. This metaphor, while beautiful on its own, takes full effect when paralleled within the text. Continuing to use light as a symbol of desire, the protagonist writes, “Have you ever looked at the sky at night after it has snowed? Orange glow, light caught between somewhere. Makes you want to reach up and touch, so sometimes, you pray. If prayer is mostly a desire from the inner self, then you’re praying for a safe trip for her” (Nelson 20-21). Inherently, the repetitious phrases within the prose of the novel function as prayers, both in their structure and their intent, which further intensifies the symbolism of desire found here. The “orange glow” magnetically pulls the protagonist towards itself, planting desire into the mind of the reader. Just as she earlier rose up to “reach for the elegant glow”, so does the protagonist here succumb to that desire, equating that action with prayer in his mind. As light is desire, and desire is prayer, light thus becomes not merely a vivid metaphor for a romantic relationship, but something more individual, raw and spiritual. This in turn takes the aforementioned relationship from a romanticization of the mundane to a more sacred connection. Further into the novel, the metaphor shifts as the protagonist likewise shifts the focus of his desires, which morph from desiring a relationship with her to desiring to cultivate his certainty in himself and the terms he uses to define his identity. In taking more confidence in his label as a photographer, he begins to use light to focus on his subjects, specifically focusing on the light refracting through their eyes.
It’s one thing to be looked at and another to be seen. You’re asking to see her as you take her portrait, hurtling through south-east London. There, as a solid shaft of amber light breaks through the glass, grazing cheeks, lips, eyes, the eyes themselves like light diffracted through infinite glass; you see hazel, green, yellow; you see a trust you are grateful for. The mechanism in your camera snaps shut as your finger touches the trigger. (Nelson 100)
Here, while light still breaks across another in a corporeal sense, the symbolism has more relevance to his sense of self than a desire for something external. He uses his newly developed confidence in his identity to capture that same confidence in another, allowing their characteristics to have an effect on him. At the beginning of the novel, light revealed a self-imposed gap between them, for he convinced himself that light was something she alone was capable of holding. Slowly, he himself reached for it in that metaphor of prayer. Now that he has matured, he gives himself the ability to touch light as well through his photography, erasing the imbalance seen in the beginning. This shows a remarkable amount of growth, for he no longer uses light to reveal a desire for something that will mature him externally for the sake of another, rather, he can grow for his own sake from within. As the novel closes, Nelson writes, “You joked as a photographer that you spent time chasing light, but you should’ve also said you bent darkness as well” (163-164). In reversing the metaphor and highlighting the fact that light and darkness come hand in hand, the growth of the character is fulfilled, in that he now has a sense of self-reliance and has lessened his dependency on others. No longer does he chase after what he desires, the light, he now knows that finding his identity from within, rather than chasing after external solutions, is where his maturity is found. Notably, this growth follows a commentary on love outlined by the ancient philosopher Plato, who draws connections between love, desire, and beauty, which he equates with goodness. In Plato’s The Symposium, he recalls a conversation held with Diotima, a priestess, who proposes, “...lovers are people who are in search of the other half of themselves, but [...] love is not desire either of the half or of the whole, unless that half or whole happens to be good [...]The only object of men's love is what is good” (Plato 85-86). Here, the idea that love for the sake of loving another is the highest form of love is dismantled, for love is not “desire [...] of the half”, rather, only “what is good”. At the beginning of the novel, the protagonist desired the dancer much as Diotima first outlines, as another half of himself. However, as he matures, he realizes that the relationship can only be “good” if he himself is good. One cannot be only half a person and therefore cannot frame the pursuit of any relationship as something that will bring completion or make one whole, since any individual has intrinsic value through the reality of their existence and can only become good through internal growth. Through realizing this and furthering his own emotional growth, becoming good himself, the protagonist creates a stronger bond of love and desire in his relationship.
Most prevalently, Nelson scatters the concept of a joint, a fracture, a break throughout his novel, presenting it as a question to decidedly establish the fluidity of personal interpretation and forcing its interpretation to be dependent on the circumstances of the text. Nelson first incorporates this phrasing in regards to the female protagonist’s determination to reconnect with her father, saying, “No, the line was there, is always there, will always be there, but she’s trying to reinforce, to strengthen. Blood and bone across the water, across continents and borders. What is a joint? What is a fracture? What is a break? It’s all very difficult” (Nelson 21). The surrounding context implies that a joint, a fracture, and a break are connected to heritage and ancestry, the bonds one forms with a parent. A joint, surely, is a connection. The fracture and break represent the splitting of that bond, in that a weakness is necessary for reinforcement and strengthening to take place. She goes on to tell him that, “We all fail each other, sometimes small, sometimes big, but look, when we love, we trust, and when we fail, we fracture that joint” (Nelson 22-23). This elaborates the meaning of the phrase, as she outlines how she personally considers that joint to be a direct representation of trust. Further into the novel, after almost a week of tender, platonic intimacy, the protagonist ponders, “More immediately, the five-day stretch in which you have barely left each other, in which nothing really happened but two friends sharing a bed and knowing an intimacy some never will. That is to ask, what is a joint? What is a fracture? What is a break?” (Nelson 61). The previous analysis of this same phrase falls short here, for while an established connection can be seen in “two friends sharing a bed and knowing an intimacy some never will”, which could be represented by the “joint”, the connection is not threatened. This, however, has nothing to do with heritage, as previously discussed; furthermore, it leaves the implications of a fracture and a break enigmatic, with no terrestrial connections to the metaphor; it is as if they represent the protagonist’s anxious belief that the breakage of intimate bonds is simply inevitable. The fluidity of this metaphor calls to mind the ideas of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who proposed the famously complex literary theory of deconstruction. A deconstructionist approach serves to highlight the importance of context by stating that the meaning of any word can only be understood in relation to the words around it, thus, the same phrase can have vastly different interpretations based on the circumstances of its placement. This is explained by R. Gnanasekaran in an article published in the International Journal of English Literature and Culture. Gnanasekaran explains:
A deconstructionist has the firm conviction that no single and right significance can be agreed to the content of the text. Plus, the impact of the outside world has its own particular effect on the text by the author. This implies that the content may be a composite of different inside inconsistencies, discontinuities, and irregularities. Inner disagreements may be as paradoxes; discontinuities as crevices, gap, tense, time, individual, or state of mind; and irregularities in pluri-dimensional. (Gnanasekaran 212-213)
Here, he asserts that the meaning of the text can have “no single and right significance”, in that the content of the prose will always be affected by, first and foremost, the author’s intent as influenced by external circumstances, but also the reader’s personal interpretation, likewise influenced by their own external circumstances. Furthermore, the internal context of the words themselves superimposes yet another layer of interpretation, as the meaning of a word or phrase, such as “a joint, a fracture, a break”, can change based on who the phrase refers to, when it is stated, and why, or, the “gap, tense, time, individual, or state of mind.” Applying the deconstructionist theory to Nelson’s work, the logic behind the ever-evolving nature of his words is made clear. Separating the two protagonists, Nelson pens an aching description of love, saying, “It is like you both dived into the open water, but you have resurfaced with her elsewhere. It is like you formed a joint only to fracture, only to break [...] You know to love is to be a whole, partial, a joint, a fracture, a heart, a bone” (112). Here, once again, the implications of the phrase change drastically, for now the inevitable break the protagonist dreaded has occurred. The context of their physical circumstances, namely, an unfamiliar separation, brings another layer of contrast into the analysis. By highlighting that they have formed a joint “only to fracture, only to break”, Nelson shows how the protagonist’s anxieties are fulfilled. This further adds to the implications of the word “break” for not only have they physically broken apart, the protagonist feels that they have emotionally fractured as well. However, where before the fracture and break represented a sense of anxiety, Nelson goes on to portray them as an essential component of love. Love is to be both “whole” and “partial'', a “joint” and a “fracture”, and the emphasis on these contrasting terms displays the turmoil of love. Deconstructionally, the joint and fracture evolve from emphasizing first and foremost the strength of a bond to emphasizing tthe pain of a separation.
Thus, the significance in Nelson’s use of metaphors lies most deeply in the fluidity of their meanings, more so than if their interpretations were set in stone. He uses rhythm to represent the juxtapositions in the protagonists’ perceptions of life and show how, despite their starkly different experiences, neither’s interpretation could be construed as incorrect. Light represents desire; furthermore, it reveals the protagonist’s journey towards confidence in his identity. Joints, fractures, and breaks represent human connection, but the impermanence of this interpretation adds to the emphasis of its analysis. Moreover, the repetition of these phrases utilizes a stylistic choice that immerses the reader, allowing them to use the significance of personal interpretation highlighted in the book to read their own experiences between the lines.
Works Referenced
Gnanasekaran, R. “An Introduction to Derrida, Deconstruction and Post-Structuralism” International Journal of English Literature and Culture. Vol. 3(7), 2015, 211-214.
Nelson, Caleb Azumah. Open Water. Grove Press, Black Cat, 2021.
Plato. The Symposium. Translated by W. Hamilton, Harmondsworth : Penguin Books, 1951.
Biography
Olivia is an eighteen-year-old undergrad student at Mt. San Antonio College working towards a degree in English. She currently hopes to transfer out of state and pursue a career in teaching, preferably at a college level.
Comments