Character Analysis: Silver Water

oes it mean a life is being lived just because someone is actually alive? Amy Bloom, author of the story “Silver Water”, tells the story of a young woman who has gone “insane” named Rose and is told the from the point of view of her sister Violet. Bloom shows through Rose’s experiences that just because someone is alive does not always mean that person is actually living.
Rose is not actually living life for the majority of the story and one scene shows this when her father speaks with her sister Violet about Rose’s insurance policy. Violet is not pleased to find out that her sister must be symptom-free for forty-five days. “Jesus Daddy, how could you get that kind of policy? She hasn’t been symptom-free for forty-five minutes,” Violet says. Violet knows her sister can not go symptom-free for long without her medication. Rose has a hard time staying sane without medication to aid her, and that is no way for a person to live. She has moments when she can not control her actions and her memory of people are forgotten and thrown to the side. Rose is very well alive and is human, but she is not exactly living life the way a life should be lived.
As well as not being able to stay symptom-free for an extended period of time, Rose also experiences periods of instability or lapses of her mind.
“I sat with her, uncovering the bottle of white pills by her hand, and watch the stars fade.” Violet understood that Rose no longer wanted to live the way she was living, if she was even living at all. Violet did not want to see her sister being alive with no purpose when she has to be doped up just to function at a stable level. This is why she lets her sister fade away into a life after the one she had just escaped from in hopes of actually being able to