refuge

 I love how she connects the lost of birds by the water level with the loss of her love. The chapter of Whistling swan. This chapter suggests that Williams is setting aside her religious views.  She said, “At dusk, I left the swan-like a crucifix on the sand. I did not look back.” This seems to imply that she similarly left Christianity behind. At the beginning of this chapter, Williams and her mother attend the funeral of Tamra Pulfer, the young woman with whom Williams’s mother has been communicating about Pulfer’s cancer, such a religious conversion is understandable, especially after her mother’s own battle with cancer. I think that Great Lake is a metaphor for cancer. Williams’s statement describing the swan’s probable cause of death ties in with this theory; “Most likely, a late migrant from the north slapped silly by the ravenous Great Salt Lake. The swan may have drowned.” Pulfer’s death killed the swan or her faith.

 

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