At the Bottom of the River

The narrator of the text is omniscient and often provides details of her and her father’s thoughts. Although these thoughts can be considered presumptions about what her father is thinking, the poetic and even biblical way they are delivered conveys an almost otherworldly knowledge of this man’s thoughts and experiences. Even before the narrator’s spiritual journey in the river, this knowledge establishes her as simultaneously human and divine, connecting her girl to a broader sense of spirituality.

The narrator is also the story’s protagonist, and she undergoes a major internal change because of her father. At the start of the section that describes her own ideas and experiences, Kincaid portrays a bleak preoccupation with the idea of death and what it means. She acknowledges her father’s view of death futility and how he failed to appropriately understand it fit into his life. She remembers him telling her “‘[d]eath is natural’” in a “flat, matter-of-fact way, and then [he] laughed – a laugh so piercing that I felt my eardrums shred, I felt myself mocked” (71). Here, the narrator begins to contemplate the idea of death as “natural” and discovers that she finds this description unfulfilling. Instead, she chooses to confront, acknowledge, and accept death. She is born anew with this knowledge and discovers the ability to create and impact life in a more meaningful way moving forward.

The narrator’s relationship with her mother is also important to the text. Although briefly mentioned, the narrator discusses her mother’s physical beauty—her lips, nose, and earlobes. The narrator “worship[s] this beauty” (73). Her mother makes up stories about food to get the narrator to eat. While the narrator doesn’t relay any deep or profound wisdom that her mother imparts to her, she distinctly remembers her physical beauty and “inventing” wisdom. Although the narrator makes it clear that she loves and adores her mother, she also states that her memories of her mother make her realize “how much I loved myself and how much I was loved by my mother” (73). It is clear, then, that her mother’s love for her causes her to love herself in turn.

Although this is important to the narrator’s development, the narrative implicitly suggests that this causes the narrator to want to have a bigger impact on the people in her life and the world than just physical beauty. The narrator ends the only section of the text about her mother with a discussion of a choir of schoolgirls and how this contains “all that I thought life might be—glorious moment upon glorious moment of contentment and joy […] a hymn sung in rounds,” and that from this moment, she “had no trouble tearing [herself] away” (74)—implying that she would eventually realize that this is not all that life might be. Ultimately, although the love and adoration from and of her mother are important to the narrator’s development, it is more important that the narrator is able to acknowledge it for what it is—simply love—and that there are much deeper actions that she can take to truly impact the world.

In the end, the narrator acknowledges the strengths of her father—his ability to build and provide stability for his family—and of her mother—her love and beauty—while also acknowledging that there is more meaning to life and much more that she can do for the world, as represented by her journey to and exit from the bottom of the river.