Elizabeth Strout's Incoming Tide

In “Incoming Tide”, the second chapter in Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Olive Kitteridge, Kevin Coulson, a psychiatrist living in New York, returns to his small childhood town in an attempt to find closure in his seemingly lonely and unsupported life. However, with the presence of his former middle school math teacher, Olive Kitteridge, Kevin is able to push his agony aside in order to rescue one of his childhood classmates. Kevin’s ability to return to his childhood home and endure a sense of segregation and familiarity pertain to my sentiments whenever I visit my childhood town in South-Eastern Washington. The four main characters in “Incoming Tide”, Kevin, Olive, Clara, and Patty, all have underlining symbolism and representation in the story. Firstly, Kevin, the paramount character in the story, returns to his childhood town in the hopes of selecting a setting for his suicide. Kevin had primarily negative memories of his childhood. His mother, whom Kevin later believed to be bipolar, killed herself when Kevin was a young boy. Because Kevin had always lived in small towns, moving to New York provided Kevin with a foreign sense of animosity. The remaining members of Kevin’s family also ended on a dark note; his father later died of liver cancer, wile his brother had become addicted to drugs and was living on the streets. During his time in New York, Kevin develops a relationship with Clara. A damaged …show more content…
Kevin has a similar experience in the story “Incoming Tide”. In his journey of contemplating suicide and his attempt at finding closure, Kevin is reintroduced to his former middle school math teacher, elementary school friend, and familiar settings. All of which represent important factors in what he considers to be his family, home, and support

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