Swimming Away
by Clare Reddaway
On a beautiful summer day I thought it would be fun to read a story about the beach. I’ve really been enjoying the stories on the East of the Web short story website, so I decide to look over there. Swimming Away is what I found.
I like the way Swimming Away was written but it was a bit confusing. Here’s what I think the story was about: A little girl and her mother are at the beach. They are having a good time playing around. They seem to be building a pretend mermaid. The father doesn’t like the beach so he’s off having an ice cream and a stroll.
The story switches back and forth between the mother and daughter and a woman who is using pebbles to outline the shape of a person in the sand. It’s similar to the outline seen at crime scenes. After creating the outline she fills it in with some sort of ashy compound. There is also a man waving his arms. He’s at a distance, up on the cliff overlooking the beach.
The ending comes quickly and left this reader confused. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what happened. This is a short, short story found here. Perhaps you’d like to read it and tell me your interpretation?
Short Story Monday is sponsored by John at Book Mind Set.
Pretty weird! But on the other hand I kind of really like stories I don’t get IF I have others to discuss it with and figure stuff out. That’s one of the fun things about blogging! (but my own contribution on this one is limited to: pretty weird!) :–)
That almost sounds like a good Teaser Tuesday…
I tried the link to read it myself, but something’s not connected.
Candice: The link seems to be working okay now.
Well, I went over and read it and here’s my thought:
Rosie’s mum and the woman are the same person. She has come to the beach to scatter her husband’s ashes and is remembering back to the day he died – at the beach while she and Rosie were playing. He fell off the cliff trying to signal her to Rosie swimming away far out in the water. That is why she gets so freaked out when she sees another man up on the cliff in the same place her husband fell from. So she has returned to build his shape in the stones to fill it up with his ashes which comforts her, making angel wings for him with the pebbles, and then he will be washed away – swimming away from her.
I just read it, too, and agree with the above. Had to go slowly at the beginning to catch what was happening… I was initially confused. A beautiful, sad story. Thanks for the link.
So I think it’s about a lady who goes to a beach and sees a girl turn into a mermaid but then the mermaid climbs to a top of a cliff and because flippers aren’t good for footholds, she falls into a fire. The woman then buries the ashes into a person shaped hole and gets a text from a ghost.
Nah, I’m with Bumbles. And it’s a good story. Thanks for sharing.
Wow good story. Touching…and not a light summer one lol
hmmmm . . . I hate that when you don’t know what happened. I’ve been reading some short stories this week too.
This story is about a little girl that goes to the beach with her parents. Her dad doesn’t like the beach so he goes for ice-cream and for a stroll. The so called “mermaid” is actually a figment of their imagination. Everything the mermaid does is just like the mom and dad and daughter do. When she was digging a hole in the sand it was actually what was going to happen later. The mom went to the beach later to dig a hole in the sand to put the ashes of her dead husband in the hole for the water to wash away. The man at the top of the cliff is the dad and he was waving over to show that Rosie was in the water by herself and when the mom turned the dad jumped off the cliff and died. He might’ve been depressed or he might have been shocked that his little girl was dead. either or. That is my interpretation.
I have been doing an AP english paper on this short story….I should have chosen an easier one. Because of the blog and Bumbles comment I have figured out how to write it with the literary criticism to use for it as formalist. THANK YOU SO MUCH
there is a connection between both stories, try to read it again.
in the first story, it is the mother to Rosie, who is sitting alone at the beach mourning over her husbands dead BECAUSE it is the same persons in the second story who is named. Yes, the father has gone for icecream and so on, and then he is at a cliff waving to his wife, who is Rosies mother. Rosie is pretending to be a mermaid and the father thinks she is about to drown, and he is pointing at Rosie to the mother, the mother rescue the daughter, but the father jumps of the cliff (i think it was to save the daughter) – and he dies. Then again in the first story the figure she has made of the small pebbles is a figure of the father, and it is the ash of the father she is lying in the figure she has made.