53 pages • 1 hour read
Catherine SteadmanSomething in the Water
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Varying Definitions of Freedom
At the beginning of the story, Erin defines her freedom in terms of moving about at will and doing what she wishes. She compares herself to the three prisoners she’s filming and feels badly for them because their lives have been constricted to a prison for so long. As the story progresses, Erin learns freedom is a state of mind, rather than of being. After Mark’s betrayal, Erin’s view of freedom shifts. Though she is still physically free to do what she wants, her thoughts imprison her. Like Holli, Alexa, and Eddie earlier on, she looks toward the future, when her situation will hopefully be different.
Alexa, Holli, and Eddie each view freedom differently and have different plans for when their prison sentences end. Holli thrives off the crime she committed. In her interview with Erin, Holli seems most alive and present discussing how she set the bus on fire. After her release, she immediately goes back to a life of crime, which persists through the end of the book. For Holli, freedom is about taking any action she wishes, regardless of its legality. Though Alexa spent the longest time in prison, she never acted like a prisoner or like her life was reduced to a building. She maintained an attitude of gratitude, which allowed her to stay emotionally free while she was physically jailed. For Alexa, freedom is a state of mind from beginning to end. Eddie went to prison for a minor crime, the only charge authorities could pin on him. Despite this, his connections allow him to carry on a sort of normal existence during his sentence (such as providing him with a burner phone for private calls). Eddie experiences a change of heart while in prison. For him, freedom is an emotional journey of regaining lost relationships (Lottie) and doing better. These three criminals show just a few of the many ways freedom can be interpreted.
At the end of the book, Erin gains her freedom from Mark and his mind games. She spends much of the book unaware of the psychological prison Mark builds around her. When she finally breaks free, she needs time to adjust to her new and different freedom. Like Eddie, she must rebuild. Mark, too, lives in a prison—one of his own making. With the loss of his job, he feels trapped in a downward spiral and resorts to theft and manipulation to free himself, not realizing he only reinforces his cell walls. Mark finds a form of freedom from his situation in death; had he not died in Norfolk, it’s possible he would have taken his own life at a later time when his self-imposed prison became too much for him to handle. Mark never truly gains his freedom, showing what can happen to those who rely on specific external factors to be free.
The Labels We Give Ourselves and Others
Mark defines himself as financially successful. When that label is taken away, his ability to understand his life fails. He grieves—going into denial, becoming angry, lashing out at Erin—because his world no longer makes sense. When he and Erin find the bag, Mark sees an opportunity to regain his former label. The money, diamonds, and USB offer Mark a path to being wealthy. More importantly, they provide the illusion of financial success, which would allow him to pretend his previous self-defined failure never occurred. Mark literally lives or dies on his ability to define himself in a way acceptable to himself.
In Chapter 1, Erin asks the reader to decide whether she’s a bad person after what she’s done. She spends much of the book debating the question. Erin believes her actions make her a bad person—breaking the law, wanting the money, making dangerous choices. On the flip side, she believes she does these things for herself, Mark and, later, her unborn child. She labels herself a bad person with good intentions but doesn’t trust the label, which is why she asks the reader to decide. She seeks approval or disapproval of her actions to absolve herself of responsibility for what kind of person she is. If someone else provides the label, she can cite that opinion as the definition of herself and put the responsibility for her actions on others.
Alexa represents how the opinions of others can literally control one’s life. Alexa went to prison for assisting in her mother’s willing suicide. They documented everything, including having her mother make a video of how she was choosing death; still, Alexa was found guilty. Though Alexa performed a selfless act—helping a loved one end a life of suffering at the loved one’s request—society deemed Alexa’s action wrong and labeled her a criminal. Alexa could have accepted society’s label and fallen into a mindset of crime. Instead, she chose never to accept the label and maintain that what she did for her mother was right. Alexa is the most well-adjusted character in the book, which shows the benefits of not accepting the labels others force upon us.
You Can Never Really Know Someone
Though they’d been together for years, Mark fooled Erin until she witnessed how he changed. She thought she understood him but didn’t know what motivated his decisions. She thought he loved her but isn’t sure at the end. She questions whether what they had was ever real or if Mark’s job loss led to a shift in his feelings for her. No matter how long she knew Mark, how much intimacy they shared, or how many deep conversations they had, Mark might have never revealed his most true self, leaving Erin to wonder.
Erin experiences something similar with her interviewees. At the beginning of the book, she’s sure she knows who Holli, Alexa, and Eddie are based on their crimes. When she interviews Holli, Erin finds a young woman who doesn’t regret her decisions but has the capacity to show the world she does to gain her freedom. When Erin sees Holli on the news in Chapter 41, she wonders (but doesn’t know) how Holli feels about a life of crime, if Holli wants more out of life or thinks she has it all. With Eddie, Erin believes he’s a hardened, heartless criminal. When he asks Erin to talk to Lottie, Erin realizes she was wrong and that Eddie cares about his family and future.
By the end of the book, Eddie becomes family, something Erin never expected. Though he’s proven his ability to change and care for his loved ones, he does ask Erin for yet another favor. Erin wonders if Eddie truly left his old life behind. We don’t learn what Eddie’s favor is, but it’s presumed Erin will. In the world of the story, she might get the answer to her lingering curiosity, but even if she does, there will be more questions surrounding Eddie that she can’t answer. Of the three, Alexa is the most transparent regarding her emotions and thoughts. Her desires are small—to live well. Still, her most private self remains a mystery to anyone but her, and it always will. Even the most transparent people have parts they don’t show the world.
In Chapter 15, Mark tells Erin the people in the downed plane weren’t good. Erin never sees them or the plane’s contents. She believes Mark, and she doesn’t yet have a reason not to. Every time Mark wants to frighten Erin, he reinforces that the people from the plane and at the other end of the iPhone are bad. It’s not until Chapter 41 that Erin examines her thoughts about the people in the plane, wondering if they were bad or if Mark just said they were as part of his plan. Many factors suggest the people were truly bad—the USB of encrypted files, the shell company hiding any unsavory activity, and the inability to find these people online. At the very least, these details suggest bad activity, but there’s no way to know if the people themselves were either bad or good. Their motivations, like their existence, remain a mystery to anyone but them.
