“Fear envelops her in the space of a heartbeat. ‘Damon?’ she shouts at the top of her lungs, then focuses her attention on the beach, in case somehow she became disorientated and he’s swum past her. But he’s not there either. There is only one other place he can be. Under the water.”

This passage uses literal imagery and the psychological insight into Melissa’s mind to highlight a figurative dynamic that persists in Melissa and Damon’s relationship throughout the novel. In this scene, Melissa literally loses Damon in the ocean. Over the course of the novel, she figuratively loses sight of him under the waves of his obsessions: She can no longer see the person she once knew.

“A red-headed lad, his crumpled body on a pathway separated from a road by trees and bushes. I am standing over him as he lies there, watching him bleeding from his mouth and left ear. Suddenly his eyes open, he reaches out his hand and I stretch out mine. But that’s where my recollection ends. If it is a recollection.”

This passage highlights how Gothic imagery is used in Dead in the Water. Callum appears to Damon as a ghostly apparition. Damon is unsure of the veracity of what he sees, highlighting the theme of The Unreliability of Memory, as he is unsure if the vision of the boy is a memory, a hallucination, or a ghost.

“But deep down, Helena fears it might already be too late. That what Damon thinks he saw might only be the beginning. That he is going to learn the truth.”

Author John Marrs uses shifting perspectives to create suspense and uncertainty through dramatic irony. Here, Helena alludes to the dangers that await Damon if he continues to pursue his destructive obsession with learning about his past, invoking The Destructive Nature of Obsession. While the reader is now aware that dangers await him, Damon does not have access to this knowledge.

“The last time she saw him like this was soon after admitting she wanted them to separate. It was the hardest thing she has ever done, and the guilt still gnaws at her. She corrects herself: second-hardest thing. Only Adrienne knows what trumps it.”

While Damon feels that he handled his divorce with Melissa well, Melissa’s perspective puts the situation in a different light. She recognizes that his mental and physical well-being declined in the immediate aftermath of the divorce. It is her guilt over the divorce, and her termination of her pregnancy, that drives her to maintain her relationship with him, signaling that it is not a healthy relationship but one driven by guilt and obligation.

“This isn’t the same man whose life she saved. She doesn’t recognise him. But she has never witnessed him more passionate or determined about anything than he is about wanting to die for a second time. And it terrifies her.”

Over the course of the novel, Damon becomes consumed by an obsession to learn about his past through repeated near-death experiences. Melissa rightly recognizes this obsession as terrifying, reflecting the destructive nature of obsession. Her perception of him highlights how he transforms into a different person over the course of the novel.

“She briefly wonders if she has interrupted a kinky sex game before she notices they are both fully clothed. Then she registers Damon’s eyes. They have all but rolled into the backs of their sockets, leaving milky white orbs. Only now does she realise what is happening. This woman is killing him.”

This passage highlights how Marrs uses vivid imagery and perspective to create a fast-paced narrative. Melissa is seeing the scene from the outside, in contrast to how it was previously described by Damon in first-person narration. She is forced to reckon with the horrifying nature of what is happening in contrast to Damon who, being enmeshed within the scene, merely accepts his death as necessary in the pursuit of truth and doesn’t share Melissa’s fear or horror.

“The past is the past, Damon. It doesn’t matter anymore. You are here and you are bloody lucky to be so. We are trying to start a family, a massively exciting and huge deal in all our lives. But instead of focusing on that, you’re chasing ghosts.”

Damon is faced with a series of choices between his past and his future—choices that shape his fate. As Melissa argues here, Damon repeatedly chooses his past over his future. She states that he’s “chasing ghosts,” a term that both literally refers to Damon’s hallucinations and figuratively refers to his past more generally. Damon’s personal choices seal his fate as the “ghosts” that haunt him come to take over his life.

“In that moment it all comes flooding back and hits with me with the force of a speeding train. I remember how Mum died. No overdose of prescription medicine, no hanging from a light cord or hacking at her wrists in the bath. Her death isn’t the straightforward suicide I’ve spent so much of my life believing it to be.”

Damon undergoes a series of revelations where he uncovers repressed memories. These revelations often come with intense physical sensations, as described here where he uses the metaphor of being hit “with the force of a speeding train” when he remembers how his mother died. As his memories change, so does Damon’s understanding of his life, reflecting the unreliability of memory.

“‘Is the truth worth dying over?’ she presses. ‘And what if you don’t like what you discover? Where will that leave you?’”

Helena’s questions to Damon here neatly summarize the central conflict of his character. When faced with the question of whether it’s worth dying to learn the truth, Damon’s choices highlight that he feels it is worth the cost to learn more, even if he reflects in his internal monologue that “[he] do[es]n’t know [the answer to these questions].”

“A new sensation comes over me. One that I’m unfamiliar with. Panic and fear have made way for anger. I want, I need, to hurt this man.”

This passage is illustrative of how the unreliability of memory shapes Damon’s entire sense of self and understanding of the world. When he’s consumed with rage and decides to murder Garry, he describes the sensation as “unfamiliar.” However, it’s not actually unfamiliar to Damon—he simply doesn’t remember the moments in his childhood when he was consumed with a similar emotion.

“‘Damon,’ she says as she clasps my hands in hers. ‘Your dad isn’t dead. He is still very much alive. And he’s a free man.’”

As a psychological thriller, Dead in the Water contains many plot twists and cliffhangers to create suspense. This passage contains the surprising plot twist that Damon’s father is still alive. These lines are also the final lines of Chapter 47, creating a cliffhanger and anticipation for what will happen next.

“Meeting my dad was the final straw. If I continue in the way I am, I fear this will ultimately destroy me. I must find a way to focus on the future, on making things right with Melissa and preparing for parenthood. If it’s not too late.”

This passage represents the final moment that Damon attempts to resist the changes in his personality caused by his obsessive pursuit of his past, speaking to Biology Versus Personal Choices and Their Role in One’s Fate. He recognizes that his obsession is destructive. His comment “if it’s not too late” is a form of subtle foreshadowing and tragic irony, as it is indeed too late for him.

“‘I didn’t like him.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because he took Mum away.’ Dahl pauses before he speaks again. ‘And was jealousy the reason why you stabbed him?’”

Due to the unreliability of memory, Damon relies on others to tell him about his past. This passage represents an important plot twist where Dr. Dahl reveals to Damon in a recorded session that he was violent as a child. It also illustrates how Damon’s obsessive personality around relationships and his fear of abandonment originated in his childhood. Damon’s language in this dialogue highlights his youth at the time of the recordings: Like the young teen he is, he speaks in short, sulky sentences to an authority figure, Dahl.

“Perhaps Maud was an invented caricature and not flesh and blood. Forever dressed in dark clothing, lacking in warmth, having little interest in me, coming into our lives uninvited, always outstaying her welcome. Like a Disney villain. Perhaps my hallucinations have been a part of my life for much longer than I realise.”

Younger Damon was consumed by his desire to have his mother to himself. Thus, he personified his mother’s depression as a person who took his mother’s attention away from him, like her boyfriends or his younger brother did. Damon’s use of simile here is telling of the immature and juvenile nature of his understanding of his mother’s disease. He describes Maud as “like a Disney villain,” a comparison more typical of a young person than an adult.

“I am so drained, I want to turn off the Dictaphone and return to the moment before I joined Melissa in the sea at Brighton Beach. I wish I’d told her no, I wasn’t going into that water. How different things would have been. How different I would have been to who I am now.”

Damon’s inner monologue here touches on the theme of biology versus personal choices and their role in one’s fate. He reflects on how his personal choice to challenge Melissa to try new things led him to swimming in Brighton and to the first NDE that provided him a glimpse of the childhood he had forgotten. However, Damon’s point of view doesn’t take into account what the reader knows: that perhaps his memories are returning not because of his NDE but because the ECT treatments that caused his retrograde amnesia are wearing off.

“I’m not dead, but I’m not living, either. I’m a year away from turning thirty and have less to show for it than when I was twenty. I’m stuck fast in purgatory, and I don’t know how to escape. Or even if I can.”

Damon’s feeling that he is living in “purgatory” is both literal and figurative. Figuratively, his comments reflect how his life has stalled and his relationships have deteriorated. However, the feeling of being between life and death can just as easily refer to Damon’s literal NDEs, when he hovers on the threshold between life and death.

“‘When your father brought you to me, he told me he knew for certain that you had killed.’ He speaks in a softer, more even tone now. ‘You freely admitted it to him and your mother. There was something inside you that you couldn’t control. He also knew that, for all intents and purposes, you were also a caring, loving young man and he was desperate to keep that side of you as the dominant one. He wanted to prevent you from hurting anyone again.’”

Dr. Fernandez-Jones explains to Damon that his father sought controversial ECT treatment for him out of a sense of care and duty to Damon as his child. Fittingly, Fernandez-Jones himself adopts a fatherly tone with Damon in this passage, speaking in “a softer, more even tone” and emphasizing Damon’s positive attributes as a “caring, loving young man,” as a parent might do.

“I know as an adult that my childhood actions came from a good place, even if their consequences were devastating. And I wonder if they’re the foundations that created the boy I became? Perhaps I learned from my brother’s death that to get what I want, I have to take control.”

Damon’s inner monologue reflects on how his past shaped the person he became while also invoking the theme of biology versus personal choices and their role in one’s fate. This is the first moment of true insight that Damon has into how his personality as an adult is shaped by what he did as a child, even if he does not remember specific events.

“But you lost more than only the memories of what you did. He tried to convince me to see you, ’cos you were a completely different kid. But I wasn’t having any of it. A leopard doesn’t change its spots, no matter how many volts you blast it with.”

Damon’s grandmother has a working-class South London accent and lexicon that differs from that of Damon and his peers. This is represented in the slang terms in her dialogue, such as “’cos” instead of “because.” She symbolizes the alternative personal choice that Ralf and Helena could have made: Had Ralf followed her advice and turned Damon in to the authorities as a child, he might have gotten the help he needed rather than experimental ECT.

“‘I don’t blame Mel for having that abortion.’ Melissa’s head turns so sharply to Adrienne it’s as if she’s been slapped. Adrienne’s steely veneer cracks as she realises what she has said. Damon’s wide-eyed gaze fixes upon his ex-wife’s. ‘What did she say?’ he asks.”

The revelations and plot twists in Dead in the Water are often accompanied with physical sensations. Here, when Adrienne reveals to Damon that Melissa terminated her pregnancy during their marriage, Melissa acts “as if she’s been slapped.” This visceral, violent imagery foreshadows the literal violence that she’s about to experience at Damon’s hand.

“She wanted to take advantage of his bewildered state to expand upon Fernandez-Jones’s work. One of them hid the past, the other shaped his future.”

Helena’s use of language in her internal dialogue reflecting on her treatment of Damon is telling. She describes herself as “tak[ing] advantage” of him, suggesting that, on some level, she knows that she was manipulating Damon for her own ends, even as she convinced herself that what she was doing was for his own good.

“‘First your mother and now you. I got you both in the end.’ Then I feel something soft planted on my lips, like a breath or a kiss, before the images fade into darkness.”

This passage describes the last moments of Damon’s life before he dies. It is telling that he feels Laura give him either “a breath or a kiss,” creating a parallel with Damon’s first NDE, as Damon was once revived by Melissa administering mouth-to-mouth, providing him breath to bring him back to life. However, in this moment, Laura is kissing him to symbolize the exact opposite: her intention to kill him, not save him.

“Bobbi was the first person Laura had indirectly killed. And it fuelled a spark inside her that she had no intention of ever extinguishing.”

Laura’s use of language in this internal monologue is ironic. She describes her drive to take people’s lives as a “spark” she does not want to “extinguish.” The metaphor of a spark dying out is often used to describe the moment of death. Thus, Laura expresses her desire to keep her murderous tendencies alive in the same language that one uses to describe the end of life.