The Final Phase

Everything in excess is destructive.

A man once drank too much water, which inevitably ended up drowning his lungs and swirling down every part of his body, rendering him dead.

Watching so much television may act to brand you immobile and vapid and senseless.

And having some twisted view of freedom displaced onto loosing one’s self in the tide of the ocean is disparaging when you find yourself purposefully drowning in what you think is endless freedom.

“The shore was far beyond her, and her strength was gone.”

She ends up in the same place that started it all. But when the reader expects her to go on in life attempting to mold her new perspective and independence, she just swindles down, like a “bird with a broken wing beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water.”

Disabled. As if it had nothing to do in its current downfall. As if some outside force disabled it and the bird was helpless as to the oncoming events leading to its inexorable death.

As if it didn’t have a choice.

Maybe that’s how Edna would like to see this: something she had no say in. Her suicide being dependent on various causes that even the presence of her own children and the outcome of her absence don’t halt.

She laughs at the thought of what Mrs. Reisz said of an artist having a courageous and brave soul.

She laughs because she knows she has anything but that. Because what she’s about to do, no matter how much she may account it to the freedom of the sea and the escape of ocean, is giving up.

But her giving up is followed by a melodic description of the day in all its colorful and common glory:

“ She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father’s voice and her sister Margaret’s. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air. “

It’s almost as if her eventual giving up was expected, just like the hum of bees is expected, in the same way that the odor of pinks fill the air.

And it’s sad and beautiful. It’s disappointing that after everything she is just going to resort to the easiest way out: death. But the way she describes swimming out to the deep tide and recognizing that sense of fear from before but eventually having it sink, is poetic. Poetic not only because of the carefully mended words and imagery-inspiring description, but because of the understanding that the fearful, dependent, careful woman from the beginning of the book is gone. She has timelessly melded into this independent and carefree and fearless facet of her self and the greatest way she demonstrates that is by willingly and simplistically approaching death.

Without fear.

Without second thoughts.

Death being the most unapproachable and potent entity, her approaching it truly captures the theme of the book and the extent of her dynamic transformation.

That doesn’t mean I don’t think her committing suicide is a stupid act from an apparent lapse of judgment. Because I do. And her act is a mindless action that will affect a lot of people and cause their ultimate turmoil.

But even then, her willing death is the perfect way to enclose the premise. Death means letting go of every single social construct, judgment, and dependency. Death means freedom from being anyone but who you truly are.

Death is the final form of Awakening.