Janet: A Character Analysis from Tourist Season

Overview

Janet is a 52‑year‑old woman whose story unfolds entirely within the fifth chapter of Enid Shomer’s linked collection Tourist Season, titled “Rapture.” The narrative follows her final scuba dive in the Cayman Trench, a vacation she takes with her husband Gordon just before their planned divorce. Suffering from panic disorder, she has been treated with Klonopin and, before that, Xanax. The dive itself becomes a physical and emotional journey that ends with her disappearance into the deep.

Plot Role

Janet is the central figure of her story, and her disappearance drives the action. Her dive serves as a lens through which Shomer examines a woman’s life in its final moments—her memories, regrets, and desires. While other characters appear in flashback (Gordon, her friend Rae, her children), Janet’s consciousness dominates the chapter. The external plot is minimal: she separates from her dive buddy, descends alone, removes her flippers, and is not found. The dive operator later explains that the Klonopin, intensified by pressure, likely caused euphoria and disorientation. The story ends with a speculative image of Janet on the trench floor, her memory rearranging into rapturous patterns. Her role is thus both active (she chooses to descend) and passive (the drug and environment overtake her agency).

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Janet’s primary motivation throughout her life has been a search for authentic experience and self‑expression. She buys art supplies without immediate purpose, later creating the collage series Openings from domestic debris—lipsticks, knitting needles, tampons, wedding lace. This act of making art is “the only unique object in” her life, something that belongs exclusively to her. Her panic disorder, which she experiences as a certainty of dying despite negative medical tests, shows a deep anxiety that contrasts with her artistic desire for meaning.

On the dive, her actions reveal a yearning for solitude and sensory immersion. When she realizes she is alone, the word “a‑lone” dissolves into “pure vocables that signified a mysterious and intense pleasure.” She removes her flippers to feel the water “swarming between her toes,” craving bare skin. These choices are not reckless in a self‑destructive sense; rather, they stem from a need to connect with the physical world on her own terms. Her panic attacks had made her feel under siege; the dive offers an escape into a realm where both fear and ecstasy become indistinguishable.

Chronological Arc

The story is told mostly in the present tense as Janet descends, interspersed with memories. Key points in her life arc include:

Childhood: Remembered getting giggles in Bible History class at Professor Schumaker’s lectures on Hittites and Canaanites.
Adolescence: Recalls a seventh‑grade filmstrip about puberty; she did not menstruate until age 13.5.
Marriage: Twenty‑five years with Gordon; they had two children. The marriage was initially sunny, but counseling later reduced their differences to a “polemic debate.” Gordon refuses her request for five minutes of talking a day, and she concludes he never had a dream of their life.
Affairs: She had two brief affairs during the marriage.
Art career: In her forties, she begins collecting art supplies, then creates Openings, which travels through the South and is photographed for Art Forum. Notably, she does not call herself an artist.
Panic disorder: Develops in her fifties, leading to psychiatric treatment and medication.
The dive: Occurs on the last week of a prepaid vacation; Janet is certified the day before at a shallow reef. She dives with buddy Earl, loses him, and continues alone.
Disappearance: She removes flippers, descends deeper; a search fails. The dive operator deduces the Klonopin effect.

Relationships

Gordon (husband): Their relationship is strained. Gordon is a geology graduate student turned house‑husband, described as handsome but “without volition.” Janet sees him in the dive boat, his shirt “like a sail snapping in the wind—full of movement and energy but without volition.” They planned to stay friends after divorce, but the counseling failed. Gordon recalls her taking Klonopin but does not stop her. At the search, he touches her handwriting on the certification form.
Rae (best friend since age 4): Rae lends Janet her dive‑skin and later dismissed early marital happiness as “mostly hormones.” Janet thinks she will miss Rae, then corrects herself: “Rae would miss her.”
Children: Janet has two children, now old enough to drive. During the dive she reflects that they “would be fine without her,” suggesting a release from maternal responsibility.
Earl (dive buddy): A polite Texan who promised to “stick to her like a wad of chewing gum.” She loses track of him while investigating a hole for eels.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Decision to take the vacation despite impending divorce: The trip is non‑refundable; both agree to go. This decision sets the stage for the dive.
Decision to dive: Janet is certified the day before; she chooses to dive with Gordon remaining on the boat. The consequence is her separation from Earl and eventual loss.
Decision to remove her flippers: A pivotal moment. She bends double and lets them drop, craving more skin contact with the water. This action makes it impossible to ascend quickly and deepens her descent.
Consequence of medication: The Klonopin becomes concentrated due to pressure, causing euphoria and “blessed insentience to pain.” This explains why she does not stop herself.

Theme and Symbol Connections

Janet’s story resonates with several major themes of Tourist Season, which are explored across the collection. The dive itself mirrors the idea of travel and tourism as metaphor: Janet is a tourist in the underwater world, but also a tourist in her own life—observing rather than fully participating. Her panic disorder makes the familiar feel foreign.

The theme of aging and invisibility appears when Janet realizes she “had not realized how attractive she was until she had aged beyond her beauty.” The loss of youth coincides with her search for new meaning through art.

Secrets and guilt surface in her two affairs and the secret she keeps about them, though the narrative is more focused on the secret of her medication. The Klonopin omission on the certification form becomes a crucial detail.

Identity and transformation underpin the entire chapter. Janet transforms from a woman defined by panic and marital disappointment into a figure who merges with the ocean. The water becomes a medium of rebirth: “slippery as birth, which verged on ecstasy.”

Her art, especially Openings, symbolizes her need to create meaning from ordinary life. The ocean, with its “cobalt channel” and “lapidary polish,” becomes a final, overwhelming artwork.

Marriage and relationships are dissected through flashbacks. The marriage to Gordon is defined by miscommunication; his definition of love differs from hers. The story suggests that even the best‑intentioned partnerships can fail when one partner cannot articulate a shared dream.

Questions and Answers

1. Why does Janet choose to scuba dive despite her panic disorder?
Janet loves the water and has snorkeled for years. She sees the dive as a way to reclaim agency over her body and experience the sublime, despite her anxiety. The certification dive at Cemetery Reef goes well, so she likely feels capable.

2. What effect does the Klonopin have on Janet during the dive?
The dive operator explains that Klonopin concentrates in the blood under pressure, becoming three times stronger at forty feet. This produces euphoria, disorientation, and a blunted awareness of pain, which leads Janet to continue descending without recognizing danger.

3. How does Janet’s art career illuminate her character?
Creating collages from household objects gives Janet a sense of ownership and uniqueness not found in her marriage or domestic life. The Openings series draws from her own debris, transforming ordinary items into something lasting. Yet she rarely calls herself an artist, indicating her humility or reluctance to claim a public identity.

4. What does the phrase “a‑lone” mean to Janet as she dives?
Initially a potential warning, the word dissolves into “pure vocables” she associates with “mysterious and intense pleasure.” For Janet, solitude becomes not a threat but a release from the demands of her marriage, motherhood, and social roles.

5. Is Janet’s disappearance portrayed as suicide or accident?
The text does not state a clear intention. Interpretations are possible: the chapter shows her removing flippers and descending with a sense of joy, but the dive operator’s explanation emphasizes the drug’s role. The narrative treats the event as a merging with the environment—a kind of rapture—rather than a deliberate act. The ending explained page may offer further discussion of this ambiguity.

For more discussion, see the reading group questions and topics for discussion that accompany the collection.