Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421

When Will and Chris got married, they purchased an unfinished home in Hawaii that they named ho’oa’a—a Hawaiian term that means “to develop roots” (49)—and spent seven months planning, designing, and building it themselves. They continued to develop and renovate it over the years, making frequent additions. However, after Annie’s death, they busied themselves with other things and unconsciously stopped making changes to ho’oa’a.

The home, then, symbolizes the Kent family and the life that Will and Chris planned and built together. Though it was once something that the couple put effort, intention, and care into, the home became stagnant, just like their marriage and family life. Similarly, Annie’s bedroom remains “exactly as it had been the day she’d walked out of it for the last time” (52). The home’s unchanged state represents a sense of inertia triggered by grief; both Chris and Will are in stasis, attached to the past and struggling to move forward and process their trauma. Chris realizes that continuing to work on the home by making additions to it or by cleaning out Annie’s room would symbolize moving on and “leaving Annie behind” (52). By extension, Chris and Will working on their marriage would mean processing their grief and looking toward the future, which, at the start of the novel, Will is especially reluctant to do.