The Voyage Under the Water

Candice McCarty

Professor Morgan Peters

English 200-08

December 15, 2011

                      Wouldn’t life be so much easier life would be if you didn’t have to die? Think about it, you wouldn’t have to say goodbye to those you love, you wouldn’t have to have a last goodbye. The reality of the matter is that death is a fate that we must face eventually and there is no coming back from it once we go down that road. Our ancestors knew that and now so do we. The Voyage Below the Water is a story about the devotion one man has to his wife even after her death.

Our story begins with a country man named Bordeau who we learn has a wife who died, and how he grieved over her even after her funeral had been finished. He wouldn’t eat, he was silent and his life was taking a turn for the worst. He only agreed to turn his life around if the local Voodoo priest brought his wife back from beneath the water with the ancestors. So off the priest went on his three day journey to find the wife and came back with great news for the man.

            As much as the man had hoped, the priest did not return with his wife, but instead a message from her. She said, “For when one is dead, he is dead, but when one is alive, he must live.” In return she gave the priest one of her gold earrings to show her husband that she was in fact the true keeper of her message.

            From that day on the man lived in peace knowing that he would one day be reunited with his wife, when it was his time to go. But when you think about it, that really is all we have left, hope. Hope that one day we will get to be in peace with those we have lost before. We believe this to be true now, just as our ancestors did when they wrote stories like this.

            Life is a gift, and one that should be treated as such, and not a thing we can just throw around. Some of us that only have days to live, treat life so much more preciously than those who have a hundred days to go, we must appreciate living for what it is worth. Take pride in living, and after letting a sufficient amount of time to go by for grieving, move on after a death and remember that it is not the end, but simply a pause in your life until you will see them again.

            This story also teaches you not to waste your life. The wife knew this when she told the man to live. She didn’t want him wasting his life away. You could also take this as a lesson to not waste your life. Make something out of what time you have left. Don’t sit around and waste it doing stupid things that in the end amount to nothing. Make something of yourself, and prove to be the best you can be, some of us do not get that privilege while others waste their time as if it was limitless.

            This story has a lot more meaning to it than you might see on the service, it shoes depth. The characters are well defined and they play important roles in the story that give it its genuine quality. Authors of these stories had something to say and they really gave it their all in trying to convey that message to the reader. Their job was to tell a story, and it was one hell of a story if I do say so myself.