CLASS XIIth (Flamingo) Chapter -3 -Deep Water by William Orville Douglas
Chap -3 Deep Water by William Orville Douglas
About the author
Douglas was a leading advocate of individual rights. He was a judge at the Supreme court of USA, retired in 1975 with a term lasting thirty-six years and remains the longest-serving Justice in the history of the court.
The following excerpt is taken from Of Men and Mountains by William O. Douglas.
Deep Water Summary
The story has been taken from the author’s autobiography- ‘Of Men and Mountains’.
In this piece he tells about his fear of water and how he conquered it by determination and will power.
As a child, when he was 3 or 4 years old, he would go to the beach in California with his father. He would get scared by the might of the huge waves which swept over him and it instilled a fear in his sub – conscious mind.
A few years later, in his eagerness to learn swimming, he joined a swimming pool where an incident further increased his terror. He was pushed into the pool by another boy and experienced death closely.
Many years after that incident, he stayed away from water but the desire to go fishing and swimming in nature was strong enough to motivate him to overcome his fear.
He learned swimming with the help of an instructor who ensured that William knew swimming well enough to be able to swim in huge lakes and waterfalls also.
Still, when he would swim, the fear from his childhood experiences, embedded in his sub-conscious mind would grip him over and over again. He wanted to conquer that fear.
He faced it sarcastically, thinking that now, as he knew how to swim, what harm could it do to him. He challenged his fear in the face of it and finally it would vanish.
It was a baseless fear instilled in his sub-conscious mind. This experience was valuable for him. He had experienced terror and death. He overcame it and finally conquered it.
William realized that death is peaceful and it is the fear of death that is terrorizing. His will to live life grew intensely as he had overcome his fear and started living fearlessly.
Theme
The story revolves around the element of fear i.e. how Douglas had two misadventures in water making him obsessed with the fear of water and how with his determination and with the help of an instructor, he was able to overcome his fear of water.
Setting of scene
The action of the story is set in Yakima where he goes to learn swimming at Y.M.C.A. pool and is faced by a misadventure. After that he learns swimming at the same pool and goes to several places such as – Triggs Island, Stamp Act Island and Warm Lake to test himself. But all this started on a beach in California.
Characters
(1) Douglas - He is the main character in the story. He had two misadventures in his life.
First, on the beach in California with his father and the other at the Y.M.C.A. pool. Where a big bruiser of a boy threw him into the pool. But with the help of an instructor and the strong
will, he was able to overcome his fear.
(2) A Bully - He was probably 18 years old. He had thick hair on his chest. He was beautiful
physical specimen with his hands and legs showing rippling muscles. He came and threw Douglas into the pool.
(3) Instructor - When Douglas failed to learn swimming on his own, he hired an instructor in
October. The instructor taught him inhaling, exhaling, kicking and all other things. In April, he finished his training.
Deep Water Text
It had happened when I was ten or eleven years old. I had decided to learn to swim. There was a pool at the Y.M.C.A. in Yakima that offered exactly the opportunity. The Yakima River was treacherous.
Y.M.C.A. – Young Men’s Christian Association
Yakima – a place in Washington, USA
Treacherous – dangerous
Mother continually warned against it, and kept fresh in my mind the details of each drowning in the river. But the Y.M.C.A. pool was safe. It was only two or three feet deep at the shallow end; and while it was nine feet deep at the other, the drop was gradual. I got a pair of water wings and went to the pool. I hated to walk naked into it and show my skinny legs. But I subdued my pride and did it.
Drop – slope from the shallow area to the deep area
Water wings - A pair of inflatable waterproof bags designed so that one can be attached to each arm, especially of a child learning to swim
Skinny – thin
Subdued – to overcome
Pride – self-respect
From the beginning, however, I had an aversion to the water when I was in it. This started when I was three or four years old and father took me to the beach in California.
He and I stood together in the surf. I hung on to him, yet the waves knocked me down and swept over me. I was buried in water. My breath was gone. I was frightened. Father laughed, but there was terror in my heart at the overpowering force of the waves.
Aversion – dislike
Surf – wave of the sea
Knocked me down – threw him down
My introduction to the Y.M.CA. swimming pool revived unpleasant memories and stirred childish fears. But in a little while I gathered confidence. I paddled with my new water wings, watching the other boys and trying to learn by aping them. I did this two or three times on different days and was just beginning to feel at ease in the water when the misadventure happened.
Revived – brought back to mind
Aping - copying
To feel at ease – to feel comfortable
I went to the pool when no one else was there. The place was quiet. The water was still, and the tiled bottom was as white and clean as a bathtub. I was timid about going in alone, so I sat on the side of the pool to wait for others.
I had not been there long when in came a big bruiser of a boy, probably eighteen years old. He had thick hair on his chest. He was a beautiful physical specimen, with legs and arms that showed rippling muscles. He yelled, “Hi, Skinny! How’d you like to be ducked?”
Bruiser - a person who is tough and aggressive and enjoys a fight or argument
Specimen – example
Skinny – a thin person
Ducked - push or plunge someone under water
With that he picked me up and tossed me into the deep end. I landed in a sitting position, swallowed water, and went at once to the bottom. I was frightened, but not yet frightened out of my wits. On the way down I planned: When my feet hit the bottom, I would make a big jump, come to the surface, lie flat on it, and paddle to the edge of the pool.
Tossed – threw
Wits – intelligence
It seemed a long way down. Those nine feet were more like ninety, and before I touched bottom my lungs were ready to burst. But when my feet hit bottom I summoned all my strength and made what I thought was a great spring upwards. I imagined I would bob to the surface like a cork. Instead, I came up slowly. I opened my eyes and saw nothing but water — water that had a dirty yellow tinge to it. I grew panicky. I reached up as if to grab a rope and my hands clutched only at water. I was suffocating. I tried to yell but no sound came out. Then my eyes and nose came out of the water — but not my mouth.
Summoned – gathered
Spring – push
Bob – jump
Tinge – touch of colour
Suffocating – unable to breathe due to lack of air
Yell – scream
I flailed at the surface of the water, swallowed and choked. I tried to bring my legs up, but they hung as dead weights, paralysed and rigid. A great force was pulling me under. I screamed, but only the water heard me. I had started on the long journey back to the bottom of the pool.
Flailed – waved his hands
Choked – unable to breathe
Rigid – hard
I struck at the water as I went down, expending my strength as one in a nightmare fights an irresistible force. I had lost all my breath. My lungs ached, my head throbbed. I was getting dizzy. But I remembered the strategy — I would spring from the bottom of the pool and come like a cork to the surface. I would lie flat on the water, strike out with my arms, and thrash with my legs. Then I would get to the edge of the pool and be safe.
Expending – losing, giving out
Ached – pained
Throbbed – felt pain in a series of beats
Dizzy – faint, unsteady
Strategy – plan of action
Strike out – extend
Thrash – hit with force
I went down, down, endlessly. I opened my eyes. Nothing but water with a yellow glow — dark water that one could not see through. And then sheer, stark terror seized me, terror that knows no understanding, terror that knows no control, terror that no one can understand who has not experienced it. I was shrieking under water. I was paralysed under water — stiff, rigid with fear. Even the screams in my throat were frozen. Only my heart, and the pounding in my head, said that I was still alive.
Stark – severe
Seized – gripped
Shrieking – screaming
Paralysed – incapable of movement
Pounding – repeated beating
And then in the midst of the terror came a touch of reason. I must remember to jump when I hit the bottom. At last I felt the tiles under me. My toes reached out as if to grab them. I jumped with everything I had.
In the midst of – between
But the jump made no difference. The water was still around me. I looked for ropes, ladders, water wings. Nothing but water. A mass of yellow water held me. Stark terror took an even deeper hold on me, like a great charge of electricity. I shook and trembled with fright. My arms wouldn’t move. My legs wouldn’t move. I tried to call for help, to call for mother. Nothing happened.
And then, strangely, there was light. I was coming out of the awful yellow water. At least my eyes were. My nose was almost out too.
Then I started down a third time. I sucked for air and got water. The yellowish light was going out. Then all effort ceased. I relaxed. Even my legs felt limp; and a blackness swept over my brain. It wiped out fear; it wiped out terror. There was no more panic. It was quiet and peaceful. Nothing to be afraid of. This is nice... to be drowsy... to go to sleep... no need to jump... too tired to jump... it’s nice to be carried gently... to float along in space... tender arms around me... tender arms like Mother’s... now I must go to sleep...
Ceased – ended
Limp – lifeless
I crossed to oblivion, and the curtain of life fell.
Oblivion - the state of being unaware or unconscious of what is happening around one
Curtain of life fell – life came to an end
.
The next I remember I was lying on my stomach beside the pool, vomiting. The chap that threw me in was saying, “But I was only fooling.” Someone said, “The kid nearly died. Be all right now. Let’s carry him to the locker room.”
Several hours later, I walked home. I was weak and trembling. I shook and cried when I lay on my bed. I couldn’t eat that night. For days a haunting fear was in my heart. The slightest exertion upset me, making me wobbly in the knees and sick to my stomach.
Wobbly – weak
I never went back to the pool. I feared water. I avoided it whenever I could.
A few years later when I came to know the waters of the Cascades, I wanted to get into them. And whenever I did — whether I was wading the Tieton or Bumping River or bathing in Warm Lake of the Goat Rocks — the terror that had seized me in the pool would come back. It would take possession of me completely. My legs would become paralysed. Icy horror would grab my heart.
Cascades – waterfall
This handicap stayed with me as the years rolled by. In canoes on Maine lakes fishing for landlocked salmon, bass fishing in New Hampshire, trout fishing on the Deschutes and Metolius in Oregon, fishing for salmon on the Columbia, at Bumping Lake in the Cascades — wherever I went, the haunting fear of the water followed me. It ruined my fishing trips; deprived me of the joy of canoeing, boating, and swimming.
Handicap - a circumstance that makes progress or success difficult
Canoes – small boats
Ruined – destroyed
Deprived – to take away
I used every way I knew to overcome this fear, but it held me firmly in its grip. Finally, one October, I decided to get an instructor and learn to swim. I went to a pool and practiced five days a week, an hour each day. The instructor put a belt around me. A rope attached to the belt went through a pulley that ran on an overhead cable. He held on to the end of the rope, and we went back and forth, back and forth across the pool, hour after hour, day after day, week after week. On each trip across the pool a bit of the panic seized me. Each time the instructor relaxed his hold on the rope and I went under, some of the old terror returned and my legs froze. It was three months before the tension began to slack. Then he taught me to put my face under water and exhale, and to raise my nose and inhale. I repeated the exercise hundreds of times. Bit by bit I shed part of the panic that seized me when my head went under water.
Cable – thick rope
Slack – to reduce
Shed – removed
Panic – fear
Seized – gripped
Next he held me at the side of the pool and had me kick with my legs. For weeks I did just that. At first my legs refused to work. But they gradually relaxed; and finally I could command them.
Command – order
Thus, piece by piece, he built a swimmer. And when he had perfected each piece, he put them together into an integrated whole. In April he said, “Now you can swim. Dive off and swim the length of the pool, crawl stroke.”
Stroke - a particular style of moving the arms and legs in swimming.
I did. The instructor was finished.
But I was not finished. I still wondered if I would be terror-stricken when I was alone in the pool. I tried it. I swam the length up and down. Tiny vestiges of the old terror would return. But now I could frown and say to that terror, “Trying to scare me, eh? Well, here’s to you! Look!”
And off I’d go for another length of the pool.
Vestiges – traces
This went on until July. But I was still not satisfied. I was not sure that all the terror had left. So I went to Lake Wentworth in New Hampshire, dived off a dock at Triggs Island, and swam two miles across the lake to Stamp Act Island. I swam the crawl, breast stroke, side stroke, and back stroke. Only once did the terror return. When I was in the middle of the lake, I put my face under and saw nothing but bottomless water. The old sensation returned in miniature. I laughed and said, “Well, Mr Terror, what do you think you can do to me?” It fled and I swam on.
Miniature – small size
Yet I had residual doubts. At my first opportunity I hurried west, went up the Tieton to Conrad Meadows, up the Conrad Creek Trail to Meade Glacier, and camped in the high meadow by the side of Warm Lake. The next morning I stripped, dived into the lake, and swam across to the other shore and back — just as Doug Corpron used to do. I shouted with joy, and Gilbert Peak returned the echo. I had conquered my fear of water.
The experience had a deep meaning for me, as only those who have known stark terror and conquered it can appreciate. In death there is peace. There is terror only in the fear of death, as Roosevelt knew when he said, “All we have to fear is fear itself.” Because I had experienced both the sensation of dying and the terror that fear of it can produce, the will to live somehow grew in intensity.
At last I felt released — free to walk the trails and climb the peaks and to brush aside fear.
MIND-MAP
Deep Water Question and Answers
Q1. How does Douglas make clear to the reader the sense of panic that gripped him as he almost drowned? Describe the details that have made the description vivid.
A. William describes his experience where he had a close brush with death at the Y.M.C.A. Swimming pool. As it a first-person account, he has described it deeply. The emotional, mental and physical struggle and the paralyzing fear of drowning have been discussed in detail.
William retained his intelligence and had a plan to come to the surface. He tried it but I did not work and after a few trials to save his life, death dawned upon him. All these details make the description vivid.
Q2. How did Douglas overcome his fear of water?
A. William Douglas was not able to come out of his fear. So, he hired a swimming instructor. Once he had learned swimming, he wanted to check if he had overcome the fear as well. He would swim in lakes and found the fear to return in small phases. William was no longer scared as he knew that he could swim. Hence, he overcame the fear.
Q3. Why does Douglas as an adult recount a childhood experience of terror and his conquering of it? What larger meaning does he draw from this experience?
A. William Douglas gives a detailed description of his childhood experience so that the reader gets familiar with the kind of fear that he had as a child.
When he quotes Roosevelt ““All we have to fear is fear itself” he tries to draw a larger meaning from this experience. He wants to highlight the fact that life became meaningful and the desire to live grew intense once he had conquered his fear.
Board questions
Q1: Answer the following question in 120 – 150 words: (10)
[CBSE paper, 2012]
How did Douglas develop an aversion to water?
OR
Q2: Answer the following question in 120 – 150 words: (6)
[CBSE paper, 2015]
What happened at the YMCA swimming pool which instilled fear of water in Douglas’ mind?
A: Since the age of three or four, when the author accompanied his father to the beach, he realized that he disliked water. He would get frightened by the power of the waves which threw him, swept over and he was buried in water.
Later, at the age of ten – eleven years, he decided to learn swimming. He joined swimming classes at a swimming pool at the Y.M.C.A. He felt that the swimming pool was safe. Also, the pair of water wings would help him stay on the surface but more, they instilled a sense of confidence in him. It was just when he had started feeling comfortable that an incident took place. A big boy picked up the author and threw him in the pool at the deep end. He got water in his mouth and sank to the bottom. He was frightened but kept his mind working and devised a way out but things did not turn out as planned. His lungs felt as if they would burst, he was overpowered by fear, reached out, as if to grab something, but could only get his hands on the water. He got suffocated due to lack of air, could not scream, moved his arms desperately but all his efforts failed and he once again sank to the bottom of the pool. An unexplainable terror seized him. His limbs were lifeless, rigid due to fear and he could not even scream, the only sign of life was his heart beat. He sucked in water and then suddenly all his efforts to save himself stopped. He was relaxed, peaceful, fearless and sleepy, almost dead.
It was due to these experiences that the author developed an aversion to water.
Q3: Answer in 30 – 40 words: (2)
[CBSE paper, 2013]
How did the instructor turn Douglas into a swimmer?
A: The instructor made him practice swimming step by step and gradually, piece by piece, turned him into a swimmer. When he had perfected each piece, he put them together into an integrated whole.
Q4: Answer the following question in 120 – 150 words: (6)
[CBSE paper, 2015]
Describe the efforts made by Douglas to overcome his fear of water.
A: Douglas was in the tight grip of a fear of swimming in water bodies and finally decided to get rid of it. He hired an instructor who taught him swimming piece by piece and when he had learnt it all, he combined all the pieces together and made Douglas a swimmer. Still, he was not confident, and the terror would seize him time and again. Douglas wanted to get rid of all the fear, he wanted to conquer it. So, he went to various lakes, dived and swam across them. He reverted sarcastically to the tiny vestiges of fear that would grip him time and again until all of it vanished away. Douglas realized that fear was merely a crop of the mind and once he had conquered it, he felt released, free to walk arduous terrains, climb peaks and brush aside fear. Douglas had faced stark terror and then by conquering it his desire to live life grew intensely.
Q5: Answer the following question in 30 – 40 words: (2)
[CBSE paper, 2016]
How did his experience at the YMCA swimming pool affect Douglas?
A: Douglas’ experience of drowning and almost being dead instilled a fear of water in him. He shook and cried, couldn’t eat, for days a haunting fear engulfed him, the slightest exertion upset him. He never went back to the pool, feared water and avoided it whenever he could.
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