The Beach and Sea in That Summer: A Symbol of Freedom and Trauma

The Beach as a Double-Edged Symbol in That Summer

In Jennifer Weiner's That Summer, the beaches and waters of Cape Cod function as the novel's most persistent and layered symbol. On the surface, they represent the idyllic summer landscape of the American Northeast—golden sand, gentle waves, and sun-drenched afternoons. But the novel repeatedly complicates this picture, showing how the same water that offers freedom and renewal can also hold violence and trauma. The sea is both a refuge and a wound, and Diana Scalzi Carmody's relationship to it charts her journey from innocence to violation to hard-won healing.

Freedom and First Independence

For fifteen-year-old Diana, the Cape represents everything her South Boston life lacks. The prologue establishes her anticipation: she reads novels set on the Cape, dreams of pristine, golden beaches, and imagines the freedom her sisters have promised—how she'll be on her own for the first time in her life, free to enjoy the sun, the beach bonfires, and the boys. The beach is where she first experiences autonomy, befriending other young caregivers at Gull Pond and Corn Hill Beach, and where she meets Poe, the Emlen graduate who will ultimately assault her.

The water itself is described with sensory richness. At Gull Pond, the clear, fresh water with a white-sand bottom is ringed by trees, a place of natural beauty. Dr. Levy swims across the pond in a slow, steady freestyle, embodying a kind of ease and confidence that Diana admires. The ocean views from Dr. Levy's glass-and-cedar house make Diana feel like she's standing on the deck of a ship—a metaphor that suggests adventure, possibility, and being at the helm of her own life. The epigraph from Mary Oliver's poem Wild Geese, which opens the novel, reinforces this connection between nature and self-acceptance: the poem tells readers they do not have to be good or repent, and only need to let their body love what it loves. The natural world—sun, rain, landscapes, and wild geese heading home—offers itself to the imagination, announcing one's place in the family of things. This framing suggests that the Cape's waters are not merely a backdrop but an active force in Diana's story of self-discovery.

The Site of Trauma

The same beach that offers freedom becomes the site of Diana's assault. Walking to Great Hollow Beach, she meets Poe, and their week of beach companionship ends in the bonfire where he hands her a drink. The beach, which had been a place of innocent pleasure, becomes permanently associated with violation. This is the cruel irony at the heart of the symbol: the very landscape that promised Diana's first taste of independence is where she loses her sense of safety.

The novel makes clear that this association persists for years. When Dr. Levy offers Diana the cottage in North Truro, Diana hesitates, thinking, Am I really going to do this? Am I going to go back, and live there, where it happened? The question reveals how deeply the trauma is tied to place. Diana's eventual reasoning—that the beach was just a beach, not to blame for what had happened there—is both a rationalization and a necessary act of reframing. She must separate the place from the crime to reclaim it.

The Beach as Healing Space

When Diana finally arrives at the cottage, the sea's meaning begins to shift again. The description of her first night there is almost ecstatic: the ocean was spread out below her, as close as if she were standing on a ship's deck. She feels the same easing, the same sense that she could breathe freely, and move without restraint. The water that once held her trauma now offers release. She imagines casting off all her years of numbness and sorrow, and turning into someone else.

This is not a simple or linear healing. Diana's life on the Cape involves mundane activities—shellfishing, oystering, working at the Abbey—that slowly rebuild her sense of self. The beach becomes a place of routine and belonging rather than spectacle. She learns to rake clams at low tide, pries oysters off rocks at Pamet Harbor, and collects shells that she transforms into decorative dishes. These small, tactile engagements with the sea's bounty represent a reclamation of the landscape on her own terms.

The cottage itself, perched on a dune overlooking the bay, becomes a sanctuary. Its modest scale—just one room, a building like a child's drawing of a house—contrasts with Dr. Levy's grand glass-and-cedar mansion, suggesting that Diana's relationship to the Cape is no longer about aspiration or borrowed luxury but about genuine ownership of her own space.

Beatrice and the Inherited Complexity

The coda extends the symbol to the next generation. Beatrice, Diana's counterpart in the present-day narrative, paddleboards across Cape Cod Bay on a hot August afternoon. The image of her balanced lightly on her board, swaying with the waves that advanced and retreated beneath her, suggests a new kind of equilibrium—not the naive freedom of Diana's youth, but a hard-won balance that acknowledges the water's dangers.

Beatrice's earlier essay about the Cape captures this complexity: Cape Cod is one of the most beautiful places in the world. It's always been my favorite place, the place where I've made some of my happiest memories. But what I learned last summer is that it isn't a safe place. This is the novel's thesis about the beach and sea: beauty and danger coexist, and safety is never guaranteed, especially for girls and women.

Beatrice's decision to stay on the Cape year-round—to become a washashore—represents a conscious choice to inhabit a place she knows is not safe, but to do so with her eyes open. Her final act in the coda, declining the young man's invitation to hang out and paddling out toward the fullness of the sun, suggests a new generation learning to navigate the waters on her own terms.

Character and Theme Connections

The beach and sea symbol connects directly to several of the novel's central themes:

Healing from sexual trauma as a nonlinear process: Diana's relationship to the Cape mirrors her healing—she cannot simply leave the trauma behind, but must return to the site and rebuild. Her progress is not linear; she avoids the specific beach where the assault occurred, but finds other beaches, other waters, that she can inhabit.
Class privilege and social mobility: The Cape is a summer playground for the wealthy—Dr. Levy's glass house, the Lathrops' mansion, the Shoemakers' family compound. Diana arrives as a scholarship student and mother's helper, an outsider looking in. Her eventual ownership of a modest cottage and a restaurant represents a different kind of relationship to the landscape, one built on work rather than inheritance.
Female friendship: The beach is where Diana meets other young caregivers—Alicia, Maeve, Marie-Francoise, Kelly—and later, the washashores who become her community. The water provides a social space where women connect across class lines.
Bystander complicity: The beach is also where the assault happens, and where others fail to intervene. The bonfire scene, with its crowd of summer people, suggests a culture of silence that allows violence to occur.

For more on these connections, see the analyses of healing from sexual trauma, class privilege and social mobility, and bystander complicity.

Study Questions

1. How does Diana's perception of the Cape change from the prologue to her return as an adult?

In the prologue, the Cape represents freedom, romance, and first independence—Diana anticipates the sun, the beach bonfires, and the boys. After the assault, the Cape becomes a site of trauma she must avoid. When she returns as an adult, she must consciously reframe the landscape: the beach was just a beach, not to blame for what had happened there. Her eventual life on the Cape—shellfishing, working at the Abbey, living in the cottage—represents a third phase, where the sea becomes a source of routine, community, and quiet healing rather than either naive pleasure or painful memory.

2. What does Beatrice's paddleboarding in the coda suggest about the next generation's relationship to the Cape?

Beatrice's paddleboarding represents a new kind of relationship to the water—one that acknowledges danger but refuses to be paralyzed by it. Her essay explicitly names the Cape as both beautiful and unsafe, and her decision to stay year-round, to become a washashore, is a conscious choice to inhabit a place she knows is not safe. Her balance on the board, swaying with the waves, suggests an adaptive resilience that Diana's generation had to learn the hard way.

3. How does the novel use the contrast between Dr. Levy's house and Diana's cottage to develop the beach symbol?

Dr. Levy's glass-and-cedar mansion, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and decks overlooking the bay, represents the Cape as a luxury commodity—a place the wealthy visit for pleasure. Diana's cottage, just one room, a building like a child's drawing of a house, represents the Cape as a place of genuine dwelling. The contrast suggests that the beach means different things depending on one's relationship to it: for the wealthy, it is a backdrop for leisure; for Diana, it becomes a site of labor, healing, and eventual belonging.

4. Why does Diana decide to return to the Cape despite the trauma she experienced there?

Diana's decision is both practical and symbolic. Dr. Levy offers her the cottage, and Diana needs a place to live. But her reasoning reveals a deeper need: the beach was just a beach, not to blame for what had happened there. By returning, Diana refuses to let the assault define her relationship to a place she loves. The return is an act of reclamation—she will not be driven away by what happened to her. Her eventual life on the Cape, with its small rituals of shellfishing and beach walks, demonstrates that healing is possible, but only through confronting rather than avoiding the past.

For a deeper dive into Diana's journey, see the character analysis of Diana Scalzi Carmody and the character analysis of Beatrice Shoemaker. Return to the main book page for more study guides.