Analysis of Novel: Carry Me Across the Water

August Kleinman, the protagonist of Ethan Canin's novel titled Carry Me Across the Water is introduced as a man whose "life had shown him the fruit and dirt of the world: he had killed one man and possibly a second, told Lyndon Johnson he was a cowardà, grown richà, and then lost the great love of his life (Canin 11)." Kleinman is a man whose story is told in what Ron Charles calls a series of montages in which time and space are juxtaposed in new assortments, creating a certain complexity that underscores the nature of the central character (Charles 19).

Provoking the interior monologue and remembrance of things past that is featured in this novel is Kleinman's recognition that his own death is gradually approaching (Krist 1). Kleinman is a man who divides his life history into four broad chapters titled The Flight, The Battle, The Riches, and The Decline. The Flight tells the story of Kleinman's escape, with his mother, from pre-World War II Germany. This escape is described by Canin as one not only from Nazi antagonisms toward the Jews, but as an escape from Kleinman's father, Isaac Gertzmann, a man possessed of "something meanà a feral bite that was not long hidden (Canin 61)."

The Flight places the young Kleinman and his mother in Wavecrest, a Brooklyn community in which the young boy becomes Americanized. Caught up in World War II, Kleinman fights for the United States in the Pacific Theater where he finds

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xperience. Ginger is the antithesis of the terror he knew during the war and to "the actual moments of crawling through the lair of the enemy (Canin 73)." Though Kleinman loves his wife and mourns her gradual retreat due to a debilitating condition (probably Alzheimer's), he cannot make any meaningful connections with his son. For example, when his son, Jimmy, grows his hair long in 1967, Kleinman "found himself adopting an offended stance (Canin 127)." Kleinman is also conflicted with respect to his Judaism. As Canin puts it, "Judaism the religion he had no use for; Judaism the culture, he did (Canin 131)." Ultimately, Kleinman is a man who finds himself uncomfortable in most of the skins he occupies. In his grandson, Asher, Kleinman finds some of the satisfaction that he misses with his own son. With Asher, Kleinman is able to connect emotionally with someone of his own bloodline. However, as Krist points out, Kleinman's relationship with Jimmy is shaped not only by Kleinman's emotional reticence, but also by the need of sons to assert both their kinship to and their differences from their fathers (Krist 3). Throughout the novel, Kleinman meditates on such topics as art, death, and faith with disarming self-awarene
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1274
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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