Dead in the Water
62 pages • 2-hour read
John MarrsDead in the Water
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, child death, death by suicide, suicidal ideation, mental illness, and emotional abuse.
The Unreliability of Memory
Over the course of Dead in the Water, Damon embarks on an obsessive quest to learn about his past, about which he only has vague and patchy memories. As he learns more through repeated near-death experiences, he realizes that what he thought he remembered is not entirely true. His character arc highlights how the unreliability of memory can transform one’s identity and understanding of oneself.
In the opening chapters of the novel, Damon explains how his adult self remembers his childhood. As he tells Melissa, “[M]y memories as a kid are patchy” (24). He believes that his father, Ralf, left the family and later died in “an accident at work” (127). To the extent he remembers his mother, he only remembers her “inside the flat” (111), often experiencing episodes of depression. He recalls that when his mother became depressed, a woman called Maud, “a tall, much older willowy woman with […] pinched features and eyes like black coals” (95), would come visit. He believes that her death was a “straight-forward suicide.”
As Damon’s memories return following his multiple NDEs and investigations, he realizes that many of his “memories” are untrue. His memories were altered due to repeated sessions of electroconvulsive therapy, which can cause retrograde amnesia, causing him to forget things. After these sessions, Helena further intervened by “taking advantage of his bewildered state” to alter his memories of his life story (325). She brainwashed him into forgetting his past.
As Damon’s repressed memories return and he learns more about the truth of his past, his sense of who he is as a person changes. In the opening of the novel, he is relatively happy and sees himself as a kind, nonviolent, empathetic person. After his NDEs, he begins to see visions of dead people: his mother, his brother, Callum, and Daisy. His first major realization that his previous memories of his childhood were untrue is when he finally remembers that his mother died after jumping out of a window to escape an apartment fire. This shakes Damon to his core. Later, when he learns from Dr. Fernandez-Jones that Damon himself was responsible for the death of the people he is having visions of, Damon’s entire sense of self as a generally good and responsible person shifts. He begins to see himself as a “monster.” He no longer attempts to fight his violent impulses, which have become increasingly frequent.
Since memory is so unreliable, Damon was able to build a new identity for himself as an adult without being consciously burdened by the crimes he committed as a child. When he accesses his repressed memories and comes to learn the truth of his past, he takes on a new identity where he feels tormented by the visions of the people he killed and the lives he destroyed. This character arc suggests that forgetting is a defense mechanism that, when abandoned, can have disastrous consequences.
The Destructive Nature of Obsession
Damon is largely motivated by his obsessive pursuit of his goals, whether it be in his relationships or in his desire to understand his past. His obsessions lead to the destruction of others and himself. His personal destruction is illustrated through his mental and physical decline over the course of the novel, leading ultimately to his death and revealing the destructive nature of obsession.
As a child, it was suggested that Damon had “dependent personality disorder,” or an extreme attachment to his mother. He was obsessed with her and was committed to doing whatever it took to have her attention to himself. This obsession resulted in tragic, destructive consequences. Damon killed his infant brother, Bobby, and his friend, Callum, partially out of fear that they would take his mother’s attention away from him. Later, Damon became obsessed with Daisy Barber. When he felt her pulling away from him, his obsession only deepened, and he began to stalk her. When she entirely rejected him, making it clear that she “want[ed] nothing to do with [him]” (270), he brutally murdered her.
As an adult, Damon has seemingly overcome this attachment disorder. He was understanding when his wife, Melissa, told him that she is gay, and they got a divorce. However, even though he didn’t react with violence, his obsession with her is still a destructive force in his life—and hers. Damon still wears his wedding ring, and his banner photograph on his Facebook “[i]s a wedding picture” years after his divorce (202). He does whatever he can to keep her in his life, including agreeing to being a sperm donor for her child. There are multiple parallels between Damon’s obsession with his mother and his obsession with Melissa. For instance, Damon reflects that during his recovery from his drowning experience, he was grateful for the chance to cuddle with Melissa, just as he enjoyed cuddling with his mother after the murder of his brother. Both tragic events have enabled him to have the female attention he craves to himself.
Damon’s overwhelming obsession over the course of the novel is his desire to learn about his past. He undergoes multiple NDEs in an attempt to recover his memories. These NDEs cause him to deteriorate physically: He loses weight, has heart palpitations, develops a persistent cough, and generally has a haggard appearance. Perhaps more critically, the more he learns, the more his mental state deteriorates. The destructive results of his obsession with the past are not limited to self-harm. He destroys the lives of others as well, violently attacking and killing multiple people: Garry, Dr. Fernandez-Jones, his father, and finally Melissa and Adrienne. Unable to countenance who he is, Damon arranges for Laura to kill him, which reinforces how his obsessions have wielded too much power over him.
Biology Versus Personal Choices and Their Role in One’s Fate
Dead in the Water uses a fictional disease as a way to explore whether one’s fate is the result of one’s choices or one’s biology. Throughout his life, Damon has suffered from a hereditary brain tumor that goes undiagnosed. It causes him to have nosebleeds, headaches, and hallucinations. It also contributes to his violent behavior. However, Damon is not entirely driven by his illness, as he also makes choices that contribute to his destructive tendencies. The perspective of his half-sister, Sally, who has the same illness, illustrates how she justifies her violent actions as a form of justice, raising the question of whether she has control over them or whether she simply imagines she does.
The majority of Dead in the Water is narrated by Damon. Unlike Sally, he is unaware of the brain tumor, as it has gone undiagnosed due to his aversion to electronic medical machines after the childhood trauma of ECT. Thus, he frames his violent actions as a result of a series of decisions he makes. For instance, at the moment he decided to kill Callum, he felt that he did so because “[he couldn’t]—[he wouldn’t]—risk losing everything because of him” (259). He attacks his father because he mistakenly thinks that he caused the deaths of his brother and mother. However, when it is revealed that Sally shares the same disease and uses similar justifications for murdering Damon, Poppy, and her mother, it throws Damon’s framing of his actions into a new light. It suggests that Damon and Sally are less in control of their violent impulses than they realize and that they are biologically driven to them as a result of their shared illness.
However, although Damon’s violent actions are driven partly by his biology, he also makes personal choices that shape his fate. Importantly, his obsessive pursuit to understand his past cannot be understood as part of his biological condition. He is urged at multiple points to desist in his investigation. As Melissa tells him, “You must lose this obsession with death” (134). Helena points out that “the further [he] delve[s] into what [he] do[es]n’t remember […] the more danger [he’s] willing to put [him]self in” (120). He is also frequently urged to seek appropriate medical and psychological treatments for his condition. These are all paths not taken that could have resulted in a better outcome for Damon, but he eschews them at every point. The impact of Damon’s choices is vividly illustrated during his final NDE in the moments before he dies for good. He speaks of “rewrit[ing] [his] history to create alternative futures and new possibilities for [him] and the others [he has] impacted with [his] actions. [He] see[s] what could have been, not what was” (341).
Dead in the Water suggests that one’s fate is driven by both biology and personal choices. While Helena insists that Damon is “so much more than [his DNA]” (169), the novel lays bare how hereditary psychological conditions like his brain tumor can also shape one’s fate and identity, just as much as any inherent personality traits or choices.
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