Where The Watermelons Grow

Content Warning: This section contains descriptions of mental illness and children in emotional distress.

The weather is an important motif throughout the story, embodying The Impact of Mental Illness on Family, as the severe drought on the farm parallels the suffering the family deals with as a result of Mama’s illness. The weather is introduced on the first page of the novel as being “too hot to sleep—too hot to do anything but lie there” (1). Alongside the introduction of the unbearably hot weather is the introduction of Mama’s illness, as Della finds Mama acting uncharacteristically in the kitchen for the first time.

As Mama’s illness gets worse, Daddy expresses he “can practically hear the crops drying up and dying out there in the fields” (49). With Mama’s illness worsening, the state of the family and the farm also worsens. Della begins thinking about rain. As Della tries and fails to help Mama with her illness, she narrates, “Right then, I didn’t know if Daddy or I was wishing harder for one of those big, beautiful rainstorms” (89).

The weather motif continues when things begin to shift for Mama and the family. When Della runs away from home, she hears the first indications of a storm in the distance. Della’s response to Mama’s hospitalization is to immediately begin inwardly pleading for it to “rain, rain, rain, over and over” (182) as she deals with the emotional fallout. Della’s pleas for rain symbolize her desire for relief from the pain that Mama’s illness has brought the family. Della’s visit to the Bee Lady signifies an important turning point, for as Della leaves afterwards, “a clap of thunder […] shook the ground below [her] and split the sky open. A second later, the rain began” (206). After weeks of suffering through the heat, drought, and Mama’s illness, both the Kelly family and their farm get the relief they desperately need. Mama is on a path to healing now, just like the rain will begin to heal the farm.