Summary of Pat Conroy's The Water Is Wide

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The superintendent is the remote deity of the southern school system. He hires and fires, manipulates the board of education, and maintains the status quo.
#2 Yamacraw is an island off the South Carolina mainland not far from Savannah, Georgia. It is populated with black people who depend on the sea and their small farms for a living. Several white families live on the island in a paternalistic but symbiotic relationship with their neighbors.
#3 The parable of Yamacraw is a story of how the black people of an island supported themselves well, worked hard, and lived up to the sacred tenets of the Protestant ethic. Then a villain came and contaminated the creeks, which led to the oysters dying and the people dying with them.
#4 I was a nomad growing up, moving constantly with my military father. I loved the smooth-watered fifties, when I worried about the top-ten tunes and the homecoming queen.

Sujets

• Love
• Love (disambiguation)

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 09 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669352433
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Pat Conroy's The Water Is Wide
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The superintendent is the remote deity of the southern school system. He hires and fires, manipulates the board of education, and maintains the status quo.

#2

Yamacraw is an island off the South Carolina mainland not far from Savannah, Georgia. It is populated with black people who depend on the sea and their small farms for a living. Several white families live on the island in a paternalistic but symbiotic relationship with their neighbors.

#3

The parable of Yamacraw is a story of how the black people of an island supported themselves well, worked hard, and lived up to the sacred tenets of the Protestant ethic. Then a villain came and contaminated the creeks, which led to the oysters dying and the people dying with them.

#4

I was a nomad growing up, moving constantly with my military father. I loved the smooth-watered fifties, when I worried about the top-ten tunes and the homecoming queen.

#5

I moved to Beaufort, South Carolina, in the early 1960s, a town fed by warm salt tides and cooled by mild winds from the sea. I was tired of moving every year, and I wanted to stay in one place with my family.

#6

I loved teaching high school students. I was always aware of my young age, but I tried to act like I was more experienced than I was. One day, I asked a government class what was causing the peculiar smell that hovered in the room. They pointed out that I had stepped in a pile of dog crap and had tracked it around the room.

#7

I was getting tired of my own innocence. In 1968, something had happened to me in April that changed my life. When the lone rifleman murdered Martin Luther King, Jr. , the students at Beaufort High School reacted explosively.

#8

On that day, the black kids laughed when they heard about Lurleen Wallace’s death from cancer. They were becoming hardened to the world around them.

#9

I had wanted to teach a black history course at a school that was 90 percent white. But the white guilt that I had been dealing with for years still existed.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

After the administration became convinced that I was seriously considering the job, they helped me in every way possible. Ezra Bennington, the elderly deputy superintendent, took me around the island to meet the teachers and students. He spoke slowly and each word seemed like a drop of honey from a jar.

#2

When I went to Yamacraw Island to teach, I was greeted by Ted Stone, the Game Warden, Magistrate, and Director of Economic Opportunity. He was aloof and suspicious. His wife, Lou, was in her fifties but still had dark brown hair. She was the island postmaster and school-bus driver.

#3

The school I was to teach at was a simple white frame building. It looked more like a house than a school. The trees around the school’s perimeter were massive and imposing, adding security or mystery, depending on how they were viewed.

#4

I visited Yamacraw Elementary School, where Mrs. Brown taught. She was a missionary sent by Mr. Bennington to help the island’s children. She spoke with a exaggerated rhythm, and her speech was like a piano scale.

#5

I had decided to teach on Yamacraw Island. The school was a universe of its own, and the children did not want to better themselves. The parents stayed likkered up at the club and took the children with them when they did it.

#6

The first day of school was extremely bright and peaceful. I woke up, shaved without a mirror, lost several pints of blood, and awaited the arrival of Mrs. Brown and the school bus.

#7

I implemented Plan 1, which was to have the kids write a paper describing themselves, their likes and dislikes. This seemed like a reasonable request to me, but most of the kids stared at me as if I had ordered them to translate hieroglyphs from a pyramid wall.

#8

I walked around my new fiefdom, the kids earnestly applying themselves to the task at hand. I had my first panic attack when I saw how few of them could write. Three quarters of them could barely spell even the most basic words.

#9

The kids drew pictures of me, and I noticed a correlation between those who could not draw and those who could not write. The kids then drew a picture of themselves, and I was surprised to see that many of the boys drew themselves to look exactly like they had drawn me.