Prince of Tides

Early in the novel, the narrator, Tom, describes his childhood memories as “part elegy, part nightmare” (7). Recalling his childhood requires a “commitment” (7) that he and his siblings are not willing to undertake because they would “prefer to forget” (7). The Wingo siblings have had a difficult childhood, and each chooses to deal with it in their own way. Luke follows the family line of willful forgetting; Tom remembers but keeps the memories suppressed; Savannah, the most honest one, lets out the memories through periods of blackouts, her writing, and magical thinking. As Tom notes, Savannah often tells reporters that she and her brothers “walked on the backs of dolphins and whales” (7) during their childhood. There were no whales in their childhood, of course, but by refashioning her memories, Savannah tries to gain control of her narrative. The Wingo children’s trouble processing their childhood is magnified by the fact that their trauma is never acknowledged, let alone resolved. While their father, Henry, beats them up, their mother, Lila, manipulates them. Lila also makes her sons, especially Tom, think they are the man in her life and indulges in boundary-crossing behavior. In Chapter 7, she presses her breasts against the teenage Tom and kisses him on the face and chest, leaving him “paralyzed by such sudden and passionate intimacy” (178).