Deep Water

The chapter is an extract from William Douglas's book Of Men and Mountains. Douglas was a justice of the United States Supreme Court, and the piece is autobiography — the events happened to him.

Douglas's aversion to water began at the age of three or four, when his father took him to the beach in California. The waves knocked him down and swept over him, and he was buried in water. He was terrified, though his father laughed. The fear from that day stayed with him.

At about the age of ten or eleven he decided to learn to swim at the Y.M.C.A. pool in Yakima. The pool was chosen because it was considered safe: two or three feet deep at the shallow end, and nine feet at the deep end, with a gradual drop. The Yakima River was treacherous by comparison, and his mother had warned him against it, reminding him of the drownings there.

He got a pair of water wings and went to the pool. He hated the water at first but stayed away from the deep end and made progress.

Then came the day that shaped everything. Douglas arrived early and was alone at the pool, waiting for others. A big bruiser of a boy, probably eighteen years old, came in, saw him, and said, 'Hi, Skinny! How'd you like to be ducked?' He picked Douglas up and tossed him into the deep end.

Douglas landed in a sitting position, swallowed water and went straight to the bottom. He was frightened but not yet frightened out of his wits, and on the way down he planned: when his feet hit the bottom he would make a big jump and come to the surface like a cork, lie flat on the water and paddle to the edge.

The trip down seemed to take a very long time. When his feet hit bottom he summoned all his strength and jumped — and came up slowly, slowly, opening his eyes to nothing but water with a yellowish light. He grew panicky, reached up as if to grab a rope, and felt only water. He went down again, and this time terror took over. His legs would not move; his lungs ached, his head throbbed, he was paralysed under water, stiff and rigid with fright.

He tried a third time. He tried to shout but no sound came. On the way down he saw the yellow light again, and then black water. He ceased all efforts and became relieved, drowsy, dizzy — then nothing.

When he came to, he was lying on his stomach beside the pool, vomiting. Someone had rescued him. The boy who had thrown him in said he was only fooling.

The experience left him with a fear that spoiled the outdoors he loved. He avoided water wherever it was — canoeing on the Maine lakes, swimming in New Hampshire, fishing on the Deschutes and the Columbia, in the Bumping River, in Warm Lake — whenever he was in water the terror returned, and the joy of those trips was gone.

In October, years later, he engaged an instructor and worked five days a week, an hour each day. The method was piece by piece:

• A belt was put around him, attached to a rope that went through a pulley and ran to the instructor's hand. He went back and forth across the pool, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, gradually losing some of the terror.
• He was taught to exhale under water and inhale above it — a hundred times over several weeks, until it stopped bringing panic.
• He was taught to kick with his legs at the side of the pool, week after week, until the legs stopped being rigid.
• Finally the pieces were put together: the instructor made him a piece of machinery. By April he was swimming.

Even then, a residue of fear remained. So Douglas tested himself deliberately. He went to Lake Wentworth in New Hampshire and swam two miles across it to Stamp Act Island, using every stroke he knew — and when the old terror rose he challenged it, telling it to try and scare him. Later, at Warm Lake, he swam across to the other shore and back, and knew then that the terror was gone.

He concludes with what the experience taught him: that in death there is peace, and that there is terror only in the fear of death — citing Roosevelt's line that all we have to fear is fear itself. Having experienced both the sensation of dying and the terror it produces, he had a will to live more intense than ever before.

What distinguishes Douglas as a narrator is the precision with which he reports his own helplessness. He does not present himself as brave. He describes the paralysis exactly: legs that would not move, a rigid body, a shout that produced no sound, and finally the drowsy relief of giving up.

His determination appears later and is entirely unromantic. He does not conquer the fear by willpower or by a single heroic swim; he hires a professional and does drills for months. That is the chapter's most useful characteristic of him — he treats fear as a problem with a method rather than a test of courage.

The final self-testing is where the two sides meet. Having been made technically competent, he deliberately puts himself where the fear can return, and confronts it directly, jeering at it to try and scare him.

The bully is given almost no characterisation: 'a big bruiser of a boy, probably eighteen years old', a few words, and afterwards the claim that he was only fooling. This is deliberate. The chapter is not about him, and refusing to develop him keeps the focus on the consequence rather than the cause.

The instructor is the practical hero. His method is decomposition — breaking swimming into breathing, kicking and arm movement, drilling each in isolation, and only then assembling them. The rope and pulley are important because they let Douglas experience deep water safely, repeatedly, until repetition dulled the terror.

Douglas's phrase for the outcome — that the instructor made him a piece of machinery — sounds cold and is meant as praise. The point is that competence was built rather than summoned.

Both appear briefly and both matter. The father's laughter at the beach shows how easily an adult can miss a child's terror. The mother's warnings about the Yakima River explain why the boy chose the pool, and are part of why the incident happened where it did.

The chapter is careful to show fear having a history. It is not innate: it begins at the beach at three or four, is deepened by the near-drowning at eleven, and then generalises to every body of water Douglas encounters. Because it was built up by experience, it can be taken apart by experience — which is what the training does.

This is the chapter's most practical argument and the one most worth using in an answer. Douglas does not defeat his fear by deciding to be brave. He hires an instructor, submits to months of repetitive drills, and only then swims. The fear is worn down by repeated safe exposure, not overcome in a single act.

The final self-tests are the exception that proves it: he only confronts the fear directly after he has the competence to survive the confrontation.

Douglas is specific about the losses. The fear did not merely inconvenience him; it 'ruined' fishing trips, canoe trips and swimming, taking the joy from the outdoor life he most valued. This is why the chapter is not simply about swimming — an untreated fear had been quietly shrinking his life for years.

The concluding reflection is the part students most often mishandle. Douglas is not saying that death is desirable. He is distinguishing between the experience of dying, which he describes as peaceful once he stopped struggling, and the terror of the fear of death, which was the unbearable part. Having felt both, he says his will to live became more intense than ever.

This is why he cites Roosevelt: All we have to fear is fear itself. The enemy was never the water.

Finally, the chapter argues that you cannot take someone else's word for your own recovery. Douglas doubts his own cure and designs tests for it — two miles across Lake Wentworth, then Warm Lake and back. Only after passing those does he declare the terror gone.

The chapter has a clean three-part shape: the fear acquired (beach, then the pool), the fear endured (years of ruined trips), and the fear dismantled (the instructor, then the self-tests). Each part is necessary; removing the middle would make the recovery look easy.

The drowning sequence is the most technically impressive passage. Douglas reports it through the body rather than through emotion words: lungs aching, head throbbing, legs that will not move, a shout that produces no sound. The colours do a great deal of the work — the yellowish light of water seen from below, and then black water.

Notice how the pace changes. The throw itself takes one sentence; the descent takes paragraphs. 'The water had a yellowish light... the ride seemed to take a long time' — the stretching of time is how the prose reproduces panic without naming it.

The training section repeats deliberately: 'hour after hour, day after day, week after week'. The monotony of the sentence enacts the monotony of the method, and it is the stylistic opposite of the crisis passage — slow, flat, cumulative.

The chapter closes by stepping out of narrative into reflection, drawing a general conclusion about fear and citing Roosevelt. This is characteristic of the personal essay: the experience is offered as evidence for a claim about living, not merely as a story.

• How the fear was acquired — usually asking for both incidents, not just the pool.
• The experience at the deep end — a narrative question expecting the three descents and the sensory detail.
• How Douglas overcame the fear — the instructor's method and the self-tests.
• What the experience taught him — the reflection on the fear of death.
• Value-based questions on determination, or on the effect of bullying.

For 'how did he overcome the fear', a complete answer has two stages, and answers that give only one lose marks:

1. Training — the instructor, the rope and pulley belt, breathing drills, kicking drills, assembly, five days a week from October to April.
2. Self-testing — Lake Wentworth (two miles to Stamp Act Island) and Warm Lake, because a residue of fear remained after the training.

Douglas's closing reflection is not that death is peaceful and therefore not to be feared, and it is certainly not a wish for death. He distinguishes the sensation of dying from the terror produced by fearing it, and states that having known both, his will to live was more intense than ever. Say that explicitly; answers that stop at 'in death there is peace' misrepresent the text.

The ages (three or four; ten or eleven); the Y.M.C.A. pool at Yakima and its depths; 'Hi, Skinny! How'd you like to be ducked?'; 'like a cork'; the yellow light and black water; the belt, rope and pulley; October to April; Lake Wentworth, Stamp Act Island, Warm Lake; the Roosevelt quotation.

• Omitting the beach incident when asked how the fear began.
• Saying he learned to swim by himself — he hired an instructor.
• Ending at the training and leaving out the self-tests.
• Treating it as fiction — it is autobiography.
• Misreading the conclusion as being about wanting to die.