The Sweetness of Water

The tumultuous times facing the United States during the Civil War and the years immediately leading up to and following the conflict created a struggle for identity for the American people. The parents of children who were lost in the war, children who returned traumatized and injured from the front lines, the slaves who had endured a lifetime of violence who were suddenly left to survive on their own, and the communities that had no choice but to enter the post-war industrial age all battled the disconnect from society that war induced. Harris demonstrates this theme in the development of Isabelle, George, Caleb, Landry, and the town of Old Ox.

Isabelle’s relationship with George is never warm. While they are distant from one another, they still love each other and have a relationship that seems to complement each of them. After George tells Isabelle of Caleb’s death at the beginning of the novel, this relationship changes. Isabelle withdraws from her husband and her social gatherings, instead turning to grieve for her son by secluding herself in his upstairs bedroom. When she witnesses George standing up for his family when Ted Morton warns him against keeping Prentiss and Landry, she questions what she sees:

Was it bravery George had shown? Or just his typical naïveté? Isabelle did not have the answer, which in itself provided yet another glimpse at one of the greater questions of her life: whether she knew the workings of her husband at all. (102)

Isabelle’s understanding of the world around her is evolving at a rate too fast for her to fully comprehend. She believes at this point that she has lost her only child to war, and she wrestles with her identity as a mother and a wife. Marriage was mostly a utilitarian relationship at the time, and while she did her duty by producing an heir, with that heir now gone, she wonders what her purpose will now be. She also realizes that with their son gone, she has the first clear view of her husband, and she doesn’t really know who he is outside of his role as a father.

For George, a man of passion but very little skill, his disconnect from his wife leads him to the forest on the vast amount of property his father left for him. With Isabelle stowed away in Caleb’s room and Caleb assumed dead, George turns to the company of Prentiss and Landry. “His land was his only escape, the only place a man with such a narrowed existence might find a sense of adventure. So he kept the brothers around to keep that part of him alive” (128). He no longer has his son to help him as he ages, so he enlists the help of the two men who happened to wander onto his property. George doesn’t think about the radical move he’s making because he only sees strong men who he can pay to help him instead of two symbols of a lost war and an unwanted paradigm shift in Southern culture. When Ezra warns George that the town would seek revenge on his helping Prentiss and Landry, the narrator says, “He knew, now, what Ezra had meant in the tavern, but the cry of the town was not his burden to bear. No, it was he, George, who was the burden: a burden on his family, a burden on Prentiss and Landry” (129). He understands now that his lack of foresight and stubbornness to do as he pleases with his own land has created a dangerous and tragic environment. He is confused by the inflexibility of the townspeople and their inability to see the simple humanity in the two freedmen, but he is determined to make it right without compromising his own principles, even if those principles are unpopular.

Landry is perhaps the most mysterious of all the characters. Left to a life of silence, partly because of his broken jaw but mainly because of his sense of freedom in silence, he explores the forest to find himself. He clearly is disconnected from the community for obvious reasons, but he starts to drift away from his brother Prentiss as well. While Prentiss continues to live a life serving others, “[Landry’s] isolation was numbing. He was no longer a brother; no longer one of the many who populated Morton’s land; and more likely than not, he was no longer a son, at least not in any way that mattered” (206). Landry takes Sundays to be alone with his thoughts, to think about the possibilities of his life after slavery. He does not feel the same way about moving North as Prentiss, but he does know it will be difficult, if not impossible, to ever split from his brother. While Prentiss’s commitment to him was an asset during their enslavement, Landry now struggles to come to terms with his newfound personhood and with finding an identity of his own, separate from his brother.