The River Is Waiting

The Wequonnoc River is one of the novel’s most important symbols, evoking both emotional flux and the passage of time. Early on, it appears as a physical place of solitude and escape, drawing Corby to its banks when he is overwhelmed by grief. Its shimmering visibility, “sparkling in the sun one minute, hiding behind thickets of trees and brambles the next” (79), mirrors Corby’s unstable emotional state and the tension between presence and repression. The river becomes a space for him to confront feelings he cannot articulate elsewhere.

As the novel progresses, the river comes to represent the possibility of movement, both literal and emotional. In prison, Corby begins to imagine the river again, and the sound of moving water becomes a source of peace and connection for him. In the final chapter, it becomes the site of Corby’s ash-scattering ceremony. The return of the river stone and Solomon’s presence by the water reinforce the sense that the river binds past, present, and future.

Corby’s mural is the novel’s clearest symbol of art as a form of healing. Commissioned late in his prison sentence, the mural becomes an act of memory, imagination, and emotional release. It features key figures in Corby’s life—his children, his wife, fellow inmates, Dr.