The Blurring of Reality and Delusion in The Drowning Kind

In The Drowning Kind, Jennifer McMahon constructs a narrative where the boundary between psychological breakdown and genuine supernatural occurrence is deliberately, almost teasingly, porous. The novel’s central thematic claim is that reality is not a fixed state but a fragile consensus—one that can be shattered by grief, guilt, and the seductive pull of a place like Sparrow Crest. The spring-fed pool, with its black, bottomless water, becomes the locus where delusion and the paranormal become indistinguishable, and the characters’ attempts to explain away the inexplicable only deepen the mystery. By refusing to resolve the ambiguity, McMahon forces readers to inhabit the same uncertainty as her characters, asking not what is real, but whether the distinction even matters when belief itself has consequences.

The Dead Game and the Seeds of Belief

The novel opens with the prologue, where young Lexie Metcalf and Jackie “Jax” Metcalf play the Dead Game in the pool at Sparrow Crest. Floating facedown, eyes open, they court the terror of seeing something in the black water. Lexie insists that their aunt Rita, who drowned at age seven, “lives in the pool and comes out at night.” This childhood game is the first instance of the blurring: is Lexie’s claim a child’s fantasy, a coping mechanism for family tragedy, or a genuine perception of a supernatural presence? The narrative refuses to label it. Later, Jax recalls a night when she saw a blond girl treading water—a girl she recognized as Martha, Rita’s “imaginary friend.” She never tells anyone, and over the years she “convinced myself it had never happened.” This self-erasure of a potentially real experience is a pattern that recurs throughout the novel: characters suppress what they cannot explain, and the suppression itself becomes a form of delusion.

Jackie’s Investigation: The Logical Mind Unravels

As an adult, Jackie is a child therapist, the “logical one” who prides herself on evidence and reason. After Lexie’s death, she discovers Lexie’s notebooks filled with measurements of the pool’s depth—measurements that change drastically from one hour to the next, suggesting the pool is bottomless or shifting. Jackie dismisses these as delusions, but she cannot resist testing them herself. In a scene that epitomizes the theme, she goes out at midnight with a measuring tape and weight, only to drop her flashlight into the water. Moments later, she finds the same flashlight, cold and wet, lying on the pool’s edge. Her reaction is telling: “Either I was losing my mind completely, or there was someone down in that water.” This binary—madness or supernatural—is the novel’s central tension. Jackie’s training tells her she is experiencing a stress-induced hallucination, but the physical evidence (the flashlight) refuses to cooperate. The narrative leaves both possibilities open, and Jackie’s subsequent behavior—alternating between rationalization and belief—mirrors the reader’s own struggle.

Ted’s Psychotic Break and the Contagion of Delusion

Jackie’s father, Ted, becomes the most overt case of apparent psychosis. After scattering Lexie’s ashes in the pool, he insists Lexie is visiting him, cooking her favorite foods, and sketching her with wet hair and wild eyes. Diane, the pragmatic aunt, calls it a “total psychotic break.” But Jackie, who has seen the sketches and felt the presence of something in the water, cannot fully dismiss her father’s claims. The novel introduces the concept of folie à famille—a shared delusional disorder—when Jackie’s therapist suggests that the entire family is caught in a collective hallucination. This is a crucial moment: it offers a psychological explanation for the events, yet it also undermines that explanation by showing how easily belief spreads. When Jackie later accuses Ryan and his grandmother of manipulating Lexie with stories of a water spirit, she is constructing a rational conspiracy theory to replace the supernatural one. But her theory collapses under its own weight, and she ends up pointing a speargun at Ryan, exhibiting the very erratic behavior she once attributed to her sister. The narrative thus shows that the line between delusion and reality is not just blurred—it is actively redrawn by each character’s need to make sense of loss.

The Historical Echo: Ethel and Eliza

The novel’s historical strand, told through Ethel Monroe’s diary, deepens the ambiguity. Ethel’s friend Eliza Harding drowns in the springs, and afterward Ethel dreams of Eliza emerging from the water, pale and green-skinned, claiming Ethel’s baby “belongs to the springs.” The dream is vivid enough to feel real, but Ethel dismisses it as a nightmare. Later, when workmen at Sparrow Crest claim to have seen a woman in the pool—one who “grabbed my leg and pulled me in”—Ethel is forced to confront the possibility that Eliza’s spirit is real. Yet the men’s stories are also easily attributed to superstition and fear, especially after they all quit in a panic. The novel never confirms whether Eliza’s ghost haunts the pool or whether the collective terror of the workers is a mass delusion. This historical parallel reinforces the theme: across generations, the same water inspires the same stories, and the same doubt.

Complexity and Contradiction: The Unresolved Truth

The novel’s greatest strength is its refusal to choose. The epilogue, set in 2020, reveals that the narrator—presumably Jax—is dead and can only leave the water at night. She hears Lexie tapping, and together they slip into the black water. This ending suggests the supernatural is real: Jax drowned, and her consciousness persists in the pool. But even this is filtered through Jax’s perspective, which could be a dying brain’s final delusion. The novel also introduces the paper boat as a symbol of fragile messages and wishes—Lexie’s childhood habit of whispering wishes into the pool, and the paper boats that appear in the water. The boat is both a child’s toy and a vessel for belief, easily capsized by doubt. Similarly, the sparrow and peacock appear as omens and illusions: the sparrow’s song is a lure, the peacock’s display a mask. The rose garden, designed by Eliza, represents an attempt to impose order on nature—an order that the pool’s chaos constantly undermines. These symbols collectively suggest that reality is a constructed narrative, and the pool is the force that unravels it.

Study Questions

How does the Dead Game in the prologue establish the theme of blurred reality?

The Dead Game is a childhood ritual that deliberately courts the supernatural—floating facedown with eyes open to see what might be in the water. Lexie’s claim that Rita lives in the pool is presented without judgment, leaving open whether it is fantasy, grief, or genuine perception. The game also creates a shared experience that both sisters later suppress, showing how early the line between belief and delusion is crossed.

What role does Jackie’s flashlight incident play in her psychological arc?

The flashlight incident is a pivotal moment where physical evidence contradicts rational explanation. Jackie drops the flashlight into the pool, then finds it dry and functional on the edge. This forces her to confront the possibility that either she is losing her mind or something supernatural is occurring. The incident marks her transition from skeptic to uncertain believer, and it mirrors Lexie’s own descent into obsession.

How does Ted’s behavior complicate the distinction between grief and psychosis?

Ted’s cooking spree and his insistence that Lexie visited him could be classic symptoms of a psychotic break, as Diane suggests. However, the sketches he produces are detailed and unsettling, and Jackie cannot dismiss them. The novel uses Ted to show that grief can manifest as delusion, but also that the supernatural might be a real response to loss. His behavior is both a psychological symptom and a potential encounter with the paranormal, leaving the reader to decide.

In what ways does the historical storyline of Ethel and Eliza parallel the modern narrative?

Ethel’s diary records Eliza’s drowning and the subsequent sightings of a woman in the pool, which the workmen attribute to a ghost. Ethel’s dream of Eliza claiming her baby is both a nightmare and a prophetic vision. This historical strand mirrors the modern characters’ experiences, suggesting that the pool has always blurred reality and delusion. It also shows how stories are passed down, shaping belief across generations.

What is the significance of the novel’s ambiguous ending?

The epilogue reveals Jax is dead and can only leave the water at night, implying the supernatural is real. However, the perspective is Jax’s, which could be a final delusion. The ending refuses to resolve the central question, reinforcing the theme that reality is subjective. It also suggests that the characters’ wishes—Lexie’s wish to have Jax back, Jax’s childhood wish for something bad to happen—are granted in a way that blurs the line between desire and destruction.