The story “So Much Water So Close to Home” revolves around a woman, Claire, and her husband, Stuart. Claire finds out that her husband and his friends discovered a dead and naked female body when they were going to set up a camp for fishing miles away. However, they did not report it to the police immediately; they did it only after they finished. After learning about it, Claire gets suspicious of her husband. However, the story never reveals whether her suspicion is true.
The story is told by a first-person narrator, Claire. She can be characterized as a loving mother and an obedient wife, which is evidenced by her note to her son and her readiness to indulge her husband’s sexual desires even when she gets suspicious of him. She also seems to identify herself with the dead woman, which is evidenced by her attending the woman’s funeral and this quote: “I look at the creek. I’m right in it, eyes open, face down, staring at the moss on the bottom, dead” (Carver 71). The other characters are Stuart and his friends, Gordon Johnson, Mel Dorn, and Vern Williams, all of whom Claire characterizes as “decent men, family men, men who take care of their jobs” (Carver 68). It seems that their jobs are the only thing they care about because they were not disturbed at seeing the dead female body and did not bother to report it to the police at once.
The setting of the story is the surroundings of the Naches River. Stuart and his friends “parked the car in the mountains and hiked to where they wanted to fish” (Carver 68). The place where they fished and where the body was found was remote, which is used to explain why the men did not report the crime at once. Furthermore, most events happen near water, which is the most significant repeated image in the story. It seems that water symbolizes violence because the events occurring around it are negative. For example, Claire sent the dishes to the floor near the sink, and the dead body was found near the river. Further, Claire heard the river below the trees when a man knocked at her car window, which scared her. One possible theme of the story is distrust and suspicion. Claire and Stuart’s relationship lacks trust, which is evidenced by their scarce conversations and Claire’s suspicion of her husband.
Reference
Carver, Raymond. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. Random House, 2016.