Summary of Pat Conroy's The Water Is Wide

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

Book Preview: #1 The superintendent is the remote deity of the southern school system. He hires and fires, manipulates the board of education, and maintains the status quo.

#2 Yamacraw is an island off the South Carolina mainland not far from Savannah, Georgia. It is populated with black people who depend on the sea and their small farms for a living. Several white families live on the island in a paternalistic but symbiotic relationship with their neighbors.

#3 The parable of Yamacraw is a story of how the black people of an island supported themselves well, worked hard, and lived up to the sacred tenets of the Protestant ethic. Then a villain came and contaminated the creeks, which led to the oysters dying and the people dying with them.

#4 I was a nomad growing up, moving constantly with my military father. I loved the smooth-watered fifties, when I worried about the top-ten tunes and the homecoming queen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Feb 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669352433

IRB Media

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Insights on Pat Conroy's The Water Is Wide

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The superintendent is the remote deity of the southern school system. He hires and fires, manipulates the board of education, and maintains the status quo.

#2

Yamacraw is an island off the South Carolina mainland not far from Savannah, Georgia. It is populated with black people who depend on the sea and their small farms for a living. Several white families live on the island in a paternalistic but symbiotic relationship with their neighbors.

#3

The parable of Yamacraw is a story of how the black people of an island supported themselves well, worked hard, and lived up to the sacred tenets of the Protestant ethic. Then a villain came and contaminated the creeks, which led to the oysters dying and the people dying with them.

#4

I was a nomad growing up, moving constantly with my military father. I loved the smooth-watered fifties, when I worried about the top-ten tunes and the homecoming queen.

#5

I moved to Beaufort, South Carolina, in the early 1960s, a town fed by warm salt tides and cooled by mild winds from the sea. I was tired of moving every year, and I wanted to stay in one place with my family.

#6

I loved teaching high school students. I was always aware of my young age, but I tried to act like I was more experienced than I was. One day, I asked a government class what was causing the peculiar smell that hovered in the room. They pointed out that I had stepped in a pile of dog crap and had tracked it around the room.

#7

I was getting tired of my own innocence. In 1968, something had happened to me in April that changed my life. When the lone rifleman murdered Martin Luther King, Jr. , the students at Beaufort High School reacted explosively.

#8

On that day, the black kids laughed when they heard about Lurleen Wallace’s death from cancer. They were becoming hardened to the world around them.

#9

I