Average Waves in Unprotected Waters

“Like any other nine-year-old, he wore a striped shirt and jeans, but the shirt was too neat and the jeans too blue, unpatched and unfaded, and would stay that way till he outgrew them.”

This early description of Arnold Blevins shows his contradictory nature. At first glance, he seems like any other child his age. His clothes, however, do not show the normal wear-and-tear that an active nine-year-old’s attire would. Whether they are “too neat” and “too blue” because Arnold will only accept them that way or because Bet insists on his immaculate appearance is unclear. Either way, Arnold is different from other children his age.

“And his face was elderly—pinched, strained, tired—though it should have looked as unused as his jeans.”

Tyler uses specific word choices to illustrate the discord in Arnold’s life. She juxtaposes his face with the description of his jeans to emphasize the contradictions; previously, appearing unused sets him apart from normal children; here, the anachronistic aging separates him. Arnold’s “pinched, strained, tired” face belies a difficult home life. The contradictions between these details also hint that Bet is an unreliable narrator; her descriptions convey more about her emotional state than the objective truth.

“Nothing you could do to it would lighten its cluttered look. There was always that feeling of too many lives layered over other lives, like the layers of brownish wallpaper her child had peeled away in the corner by his bed.”

Tyler presents Bet and Arnold’s apartment as dingy and littered because of the years of use and all of the figurative fragments previous occupants have left behind. Bet internalizes others’ baggage, but the “layers” also represent her own past lives having a psychological effect on her. The color brown symbolizes the mixing of multiple colors or the amalgamation of the pieces of others’ histories across time.