When The Wasps Drowned

‘It was the first time the garden walls seemed confining.’ The first section of the story uses pathetic fallacy to mirror the mood of the setting. The narrator talks about how the sun makes her ‘listless’ like the sheets, and how the garden is now ‘confining.’ As this is the first time, we know that she is maturing as a person, and growing up, as now she has the height to see over the walls. ‘When I closed my eyes, I could see Therese’s dream, the arm growing out of the soil.’ The hand they uncover, in her dreams, becomes a horrific nightmare situation. The arm is a symbol of the guilt the narrator feels because she has covered up the secret. Here the arm grows up, like a tree, disturbing the garden and us as readers.