Kari Strutt’s “Touching Bottom” is about her memorable experiences in relation to swimming that influenced or shaped her character, ideals, and life. Strutt’s story begins when she was a child and her father encouraged her to learn swimming. She is a good swimmer but one traumatic experience in camp raised her fears of swimming in murky waters. For this reason, Strutt only agreed to learn swimming at the YMCA pool. Years later, Strutt marries her husband against her father’s wishes. Ian, her husband’s son from his first marriage, becomes part of their family. Strutt recalls a life-defining moment when she and Ian almost drowned. After this, she divorces her husband. She may have lost her husband but she gained a friend in Ian.
Strutt showed…show more content… Strutt’s father did not want her to marry her husband but she did anyway. Her father did not attend her wedding. Later on, Strutt learns that her husband is a womanizer. Both represent the conflict in Strutt’s personal relationships. Strutt resolves these conflicts, not necessarily with his father nor her husband, but within herself by remembering the things that she learned during her swimming lessons. Lessons such as grit and resilience, as told in the story, helped me deal with grief after losing a loved one. Coping with grief is difficult but I learned that it is something that we must learn to get through, like a storm that passes after considerable time has…show more content… Strutt recounts her childhood experiences of swimming as a starting point to show how this has shaped her life and influenced her morals and values. Later on, readers will see that Strutt’s memories, particularly the lessons she learns from swimming, help her in coping with conflicts in her adult life. By using anecdote as the literary device, Strutt enhances the theme of the importance of resilience and grit in handling conflicts and challenges. Another literary device that coincides with anecdote is bildungsroman. Throughout the story, Strutt comes into her own and grows because of her childhood experiences and later on, struggles as an adult. Bildungsroman enhances the story because it serves as a platform through which Strutt shows the narrative’s essence, which is her learning experiences from childhood until
