In Great Waters: Four Stories — Background and Themes

Chance and Its Consequences

Janvier repeatedly probes the force of chance in human affairs. In one excerpt, a character reflects on how 'a whim of the moment' led him to cross a canal, how 'the mere chance of the three church-bound women hurrying into the ferry-boat' prevented his immediate return. The narrator muses on 'this force which with a grim humour uses our most unconsidered actions for the making or the unmaking of our lives.' Such passages are not mere philosophical asides; they structure the plot. A later scene hinges on a chance meeting with a major who, having heard news from a boat captain, offers congratulations that the protagonist must awkwardly deflect. The pattern suggests that Janvier uses coincidence not as a shortcut but as a deliberate theme, inviting readers to watch how small turns redirect entire lives.

Landscapes of Memory and Loss

Settings in these stories often carry emotional weight. A graveyard visited after a long absence is noted with 'dull surprise because he found the dismal place still precisely as he remembered it. That in so very long a time it should not have become more ruinous seemed to him unreasonable.' This attention to the persistence of place—its refusal to decay at the pace of human grief—echoes the collection's maritime settings, where the sea itself is both changeless and ever-changing. The protagonist's slow, hesitant walk through 'stunted pines' to a desolate graveyard mirrors his internal hesitation. Janvier does not overstate the symbolism; instead, he lets the physical details—the broken fence, the little church, the castle that appears again—accumulate into a geography of memory.

Dialect and Social Distance

Janvier renders speech with careful attention to regional dialect, particularly in the character of the Major, whose South Carolina accent is spelled out phonetically: 'Aha, Masteh Geo'ge, I'm glad to see yo' and to congratulate yo'!' The Major's hearty, expansive manner contrasts with the protagonist's reticence, and his dialect marks him as belonging to a different social world—one of warm cordiality and blunt congratulations. The protagonist, by contrast, speaks in standard English, and his internal thoughts are rendered in a more measured, literary register. This linguistic divide underscores the tension between the protagonist's private turmoil and the social expectations thrust upon him. Readers attentive to voice will find that Janvier uses dialect not for mere color but to signal the gaps between characters' inner lives and their public performances.

Readers approaching In Great Waters will find that the four stories reward attention to small details: a hesitation before a door, the precise wording of a curse, the way a landscape refuses to change. Janvier's prose is economical but layered, and his characters' dilemmas often turn on what is left unsaid. The collection offers a coherent vision of coastal life where the sea is both a boundary and a mirror.