Growing up is a passage in life which can be compared with passing a highway. Some get unharmed over the passage, while others get run over and get deep scars on souls and bodies for life. Finding a safe way over the highway demands parenting and the ability to stand on you own and fight for what you want. These two themes are dealt with in the story “Close to the Water’s Edge” by Claire Keegan, published in 1999, where the unnamed main character is trying to find a space between the speeding cars (page 5, line 147).
The text is a short story and takes place somewhere on the east coast of the USA in the early 1990’s or sometime before 1999 in a very wealthy environment (page 1, the italic line and line 4).The story involves four persons; the main character, his mother, stepfather, and his grandmother. The nameless main character, who has left his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to celebrate his 19th birthday with his mother and millionaire stepfather, is an intelligent good-looking guy, who is getting straight A’s at Harvard University. He is shy person, whose self-worth is being reduced by his rich, scornful and self-centred stepfather. An example of the stepfather’s scornfulness is seen in the following quotation:
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