When her mom comments on her lack of attempts to save her marriage, Rose is reminded of her brother and how she had let him drown when instead she could have tried to save him. Rose describes this memory saying,
“I look up and see Bing walking alone to the edge of the reef. In the confusion of the fight, nobody notices. I am the only one who sees what Bing is doing. Bing walks one, two, three steps. His little body is moving so quickly, as if he spotted something wonderful by the water’s edge. And I think, He’s going to fall in. I’m expecting it. And just as I think this, his feet are already in the air, in a moment of balance, …show more content…
Rose contemplates the reasons to save her marriage and compares them to the loss of her brother by saying, “I know now that I had never expected to find Bing, just as I know now I will never find a way to save my marriage. My mother tells me, though, that I should still try. ‘What’s the point?’ I say. ‘There’s no hope. There’s no reason to keep trying.’ ‘Because you must’ she says. ‘This is not hope. Not reason. This is your fate. This is your life, what you must do.’” (139) This quote shows how Rose is letting her marriage fall without doing anything to stop it. Her mother tries to advise her to she has to try to preserve her marriage because it is her fate, and she cannot let it fall without at least doing something to try to stop