Describe the different emotions William felt as he was drowning.
Answers
Answer:
The story has been taken from the author’s autobiography- ‘Of Men and Mountains’.
In this piece he tells about his fear of water and how he conquered it by determination and will power.
As a child, when he was 3 or 4 years old, he would go to the beach in California with his father. He would get scared by the might of the huge waves which swept over him and it instilled a fear in his sub – conscious mind.
A few years later, in his eagerness to learn swimming, he joined a swimming pool where an incident further increased his terror. He was pushed into the pool by another boy and experienced death closely.
Many years after that incident, he stayed away from water but the desire to go fishing and swimming in nature was strong enough to motivate him to overcome his fear.
He learned swimming with the help of an instructor who ensured that William knew swimming well enough to be able to swim in huge lakes and waterfalls also.
Still, when he would swim, the fear from his childhood experiences, embedded in his sub-conscious mind would grip him over and over again. He wanted to conquer that fear.