The Paper Boat Symbol in The Drowning Kind: Wishes, Messages, and the Water's Pull
What the Paper Boat Is
A paper boat in The Drowning Kind is a small vessel folded from lined notebook paper, the kind a child might make in school. It appears three times in the novel: twice in the present-day timeline at Sparrow Crest and once in a childhood memory. In every appearance, the boat carries or implies a written message, and it floats on water—either the spring-fed pool or the canal that drains from it. The boat is a handmade, fragile object, and its presence in the dark, sulfurous water makes it stand out as something human and deliberate.
Where the Paper Boat Appears
The first present-day appearance is in Chapter Seven (June 2019). Jackie, searching the pool area after her sister's death, notices a folded paper boat drifting at the far end of the pool. It is made from lined notebook paper with three holes along the edge, and words are visible through the damp page. When she unfolds it, she finds a message scribbled in green crayon in what appears to be Lexie's handwriting: "Why didn't you pick up the phone?" Jackie drops the boat back into the water and, for half a second, expects Lexie to come bursting out of the pool, gasping for breath.
The second appearance is in Chapter Seventeen, on the day of Lexie's funeral. After Jackie's father jumps into the pool claiming he saw Lexie in the water, a paper boat floats along the edge. Diane scoops it up, crumples it, and calls it "a piece of trash." Jackie asks her father if he jumped in trying to retrieve the boat; he insists he jumped because he saw someone in the water.
The third appearance is in memory. As children, Lexie and Jackie made paper boats and sent them down the canal that flowed to the stream. Lexie would write messages inside, hoping a stranger would find them: "I'm being held prisoner, send help, please! This is a note from the other side of the world. Everything is upside down here."
How the Symbol's Meaning Shifts
In childhood, the paper boat is a playful object—a toy sent downstream with a fictional distress message. It represents imagination and the desire to be noticed, to send a secret out into the world. The message is performative, a game between sisters. The boat is launched and released, and the expectation is that a stranger will find it, not that it will ever return.
In the present, the boat becomes something else entirely. It is no longer a toy but a vessel for a real, unanswered message. Lexie's note—"Why didn't you pick up the phone?"—directly echoes the manic phone messages she left Jackie before her death, urging her to come see something at the pool. The boat is a message from beyond the grave, or at least a message that Jackie interprets as such. The water has carried it back, not downstream to a stranger, but to the one person who failed to answer. The boat is no longer launched and released; it is found, retrieved, and read.
At the funeral, the boat appears again, this time dismissed by Diane as trash. But its timing—immediately after the father's vision of Lexie pulling him under—links it to the supernatural. The boat is a sign that the dead are reaching out, or that grief is making the living see messages everywhere. The shift is from playful communication to desperate communication, from a game to a plea. The boat also becomes a symbol of the water's pull: it floats on the surface, but the messages it carries seem to come from below.
Connections to Themes and Characters
Communication with the dead. The paper boat is the most literal symbol of trying to send a message across the boundary between life and death. Lexie's note is unanswered, just as her phone calls were unanswered. The boat is a physical object that survives the water, suggesting that messages can persist even when the sender cannot. It connects directly to the novel's exploration of whether the dead can reach the living.
Wishes and the water's price. The childhood practice of telling wishes to the pool—Lexie wished to be a better swimmer, while Jackie wished for something terrible—connects to the paper boat as a vessel for wishes. The epigraph rhyme warns of a pale, cold figure in the water who invites the listener to "Come swimming with me." The boat, like a wish, is sent into the water and may be answered, but the novel repeatedly warns that the springs always exact a price. The boat is a wish made visible, a small offering to the water.
Water as a living, malevolent force. The pool is cold, dark, and smells of rot and sulphur. The paper boat floats on its surface, a fragile human object in a hostile element. The water "takes" things—people, wishes, messages—and sometimes gives them back changed. The boat is one of the few objects that the water returns intact, which makes it both a gift and a warning.
Family secrets and inherited trauma. The paper boat connects the present-day sisters to their childhood and to the history of the springs. The boat is made from notebook paper, the same kind of paper Lexie used for her coded notes and depth measurements. It ties the symbol to Lexie's obsessive research into the pool's depths and the list of drowned people she compiled: Nelson DeWitt, Martha W., Eliza Harding, and Rita Harkness. The boat is a thread linking Lexie's childhood play to her adult obsession.
Blurring of reality and delusion. Is the paper boat a genuine message from Lexie's ghost, or is it a coincidence—a piece of trash that Jackie reads meaning into? The novel keeps this ambiguous. Diane calls it trash; Jackie sees a message. The symbol embodies the novel's central question about whether the supernatural is real or a product of grief, mania, and guilt. The boat is the perfect object for this ambiguity because it is ordinary and easily dismissed, yet it appears at precisely the moments when the supernatural intrudes.
The pull of the dead. The epigraph's invitation to "come swimming" is echoed in the paper boat's presence. The boat is a lure, a reason to approach the water. Jackie's father jumps in after seeing Lexie; the boat is there when he is pulled out. The boat is both a message and a temptation, drawing the living toward the water's edge and, potentially, into it.
Study Questions with Answers
1. What does the paper boat's message—"Why didn't you pick up the phone?"—reveal about Lexie's state of mind before her death?
The message echoes the manic phone calls Lexie left Jackie, urging her to come see something at the pool. It suggests Lexie felt abandoned and desperate to communicate something important. The note is written in green crayon, a childlike medium, which may indicate regression or a return to childhood rituals. It also implies that Lexie believed the water could carry her message, connecting her to the childhood game of sending paper boats downstream. The question itself is accusatory and plaintive, revealing a sister who felt unheard in her final days.
2. How does the paper boat function differently in the childhood memory versus the present-day scenes?
In childhood, the boat is a playful toy with a fictional message ("I'm being held prisoner") meant to be found by a stranger. It represents imagination and the thrill of sending a secret. In the present, the boat carries a real, personal message from Lexie to Jackie, and it is found not by a stranger but by the intended recipient. The shift is from playful fiction to desperate reality, from a game to a plea for connection. The childhood boat is launched and released; the adult boat is retrieved and read.
3. Why does Diane dismiss the paper boat at the funeral as "a piece of trash"?
Diane is a practical, grounding presence in the novel. Her dismissal reflects the rational interpretation of the boat—it is just paper, just trash, a coincidence. But the novel undercuts this by having the boat appear immediately after Jackie's father claims to have seen Lexie in the water. Diane's dismissal highlights the tension between the rational and the supernatural, and between those who believe in the water's power and those who don't. It also suggests that the boat's meaning is not inherent but is assigned by the observer.
4. How does the paper boat connect to the epigraph's rhyme about the woman in the water?
The rhyme warns of a pale, cold figure who invites the listener to "Come swimming with me." The paper boat, floating on the pool's surface, is a small vessel that could carry a person—or a message—into that water. The boat is an invitation to approach the water, just as the rhyme is an invitation to enter it. Both the boat and the rhyme represent the water's pull, the temptation to cross from the living world into the dead one. The boat's presence at moments of supernatural encounter—the father's vision, the message from Lexie—suggests it is a conduit for that pull, a small, human-made object that the water uses to draw the living closer.