Symbolism: Water in Horror Fiction

Symbolism is a critical technique in any writer's arsenal. Our human minds enjoy puzzles, enjoy allegory and metaphor, and above all, searching for meaning. We look for patterns and connections, links that can tells us what it all stands for - because everything stands for something greater, doesn't it? This is never more prevalent than it is in our art. With such a limited canvas to work on - or a limited number of pages to write - the author introduces symbolism, along with other writing techniques, to evoke meaning that goes deeper than the story's surface. 

Perhaps one of the most ubiquitous symbols used in fiction is water. Water, after all, is essential for our survival; without it, we perish. It is both a saving grace and a mighty force. It can be merciful and gentle, cleansing and nurturing, and it can be devastating and brutal, destroying and suffocating. Religiously, almost all faiths use water for ritual cleansing of the soul, for purification and as a source of peace. In fiction we utilize water in many ways. Weather patterns in stories reflect emotional turmoil within our characters; rain is a deep sadness or grief, storm a raging fury, an imminent danger. A calm ocean carries us home, and a turbulent one threatens to swallow us into oblivion. Deep waters hide dangers - rocks, sharks, currents - and all of this becomes reflection.  

Naturally, this duality in which water exists in our collective experience lends itself extremely well to the pursuit of horror storytelling. In fact, off the top of my head, I can think of a number of horror stories that utilize a heavy water symbolism throughout: A Cure for Wellness, The Ring, The Ring Two, Triangle, Friday the 13th, The Woman in Black, Crawl, Gothika, Ghost Ship, What Lies Beneath, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Identity, Shutter Island - and there are tons more out there. 

Let's take a look at a few of these examples, and how they use the symbolism of water to drive home themes or deeper meanings in their stories.

 

Fair warning: This will include spoilers for the following movies: The Ring, The Ring Two, Triangle, and Identity.

The Ring / The Ring Two

The Ring is one of my 'classic' horror movies, because despite its differences from the original Japanese Ringu, it plays around with so many different themes and concepts that it's a wealth for someone like me, who loves to pick at things. So let's pick at the water symbolism.

The most obvious thing is Samara; she brings water with her whenever she's about to kill someone who has watched her video, because she is always soaking wet. Why is she always soaking wet? She drowned in a well after being thrown in by her adoptive mother, and when she climbs out of the well in her video, naturally, she's sopping wet. In this case, the water isn't a calming or soothing presence in the movie. Rather, it's a sign that Samara is near, always there, waiting for her next victim - coming to kill them - coming to take her revenge. 

Water is the way she died, and it is the way her adoptive mother and murderer died (jumping off a cliff and into the ocean), and it's inside a tub of overflowing water that her adoptive father kills himself, and it's how Samara gets her adoptive parents' horses to die - causing them to run off the cliffs or into the ocean to drown themselves. Do we see a connection? Water, in this case, equals death. 

This is perhaps a more accurate representation of how Samara sees water, rather than anything else. Everyone else who is affected by it is simply living her fear of water, and her pain.  

All of this is interesting, because water is also often associated with rebirth. While this is usually a positive connection, in the case of The Ring, this takes on a sinister meaning; Samara has been reborn as a vengeful spirit with a fury that cannot be settled. Despite this 'rebirth', however, she still does not get what she has sorely wanted in both her life and afterlife.

Still from The Ring Two.

In the second movie, the imagery is somewhat more nuanced. In particular, there is a scene where the possessed Aiden is told to get into a hot bath to get his temperature up (apparently, being possessed is making him hypothermic). Aiden, oddly enough, struggles to get into the tub, and seems very frightened of the water. Later on, Rachel watches in horror as Samara, who materializes in the tub with Aiden, repels all of the water in the bathtub away from them. It's a reflection of how frightened Samara is of water, given that she drowned in a well. As an infant, she also almost died when her birth mother tried to drown her in a fountain. Remember, to Samara, water means death, and all this time, she's been using it as a harbinger of death for her victims, too.

We need to keep in mind the complex relationship between water and motherhood in this story. Samara's birth mother tried to kill her by drowning her in a fountain as an infant, but others ultimately saved her. Samara's adoptive mother also ends up killing her by throwing her in a well, where she ultimately drowns after an agonizing seven days. In the first movie, Rachel goes down the well and retrieves Samara's body, taking her out of the water and saving her. Through this act, Samara feels that Rachel could be the mother she was never able to have. 

So, in the second movie, Samara decides that Rachel is going to be the mother that will give her what all the others wouldn't. Instead, when she tries to possess Aiden, Rachel, too, tries to drown her in a the tub. The symbolism of this is tragic; Samara will never find a mother's love, and can never have it. Every single mother-figure in her life (and after-life) has not only abandoned her - they've actively tried to kill her by drowning her. 

Speaking of The Ring duology, there's a little article I wrote previously about intentional and irrational evil in horror, which you can read here. 

 

Triangle

This movie emphasizes the vastness of the ocean, and the mystery of the waters beyond our shores. When struggling mother Jess goes on a boat ride with the kind and interested Greg and his friends, a yacht accident has them climbing into a seemingly abandoned cruise ship. Unfortunately, there's also someone else on the ship, hell-bent on killing them all. We learn that Jess was abusive to her autistic son. While driving him to his school, she got into an accident, and her son died. 

 

Still from Triangle.

From here, the interpretation of the movie can go one of two ways. One: Jess also died in the accident, and all that follows is her own personalized hellish punishment. Two: Jess, unable to take back what has happened, is consumed by her guilt and cannot heal, as represented by the events that follow. In either case, the water as a symbol functions in much the same way.

If we consider that Jess is in a bespoke hell, then the endless waters stretching out in all directions creates a sense of timelessness, a physical removal from the temporal constraints of the living. There is no current; the ship doesn't seem to move at all. The water traps, keeping the cruise ship in place - keeping Jess from escaping her punishment. That which is isolated is also vulnerable, which gives us an idea of Jess's mental state. From a guilt-ridden perspective, the waters may represent a stilling of time, the inability to move forward, and the inability to go back and change things - or perhaps even to face them. Her mind is reeling against itself, engaged in a battle in which only one outcome can prevail.

When Jess is thrown overboard, she washes up ashore, the water having taken her home. But she's also back in time - the morning of her son's death - and she goes home to watch herself abuse her son, metaphorically facing what she's done at last. In an attempt to change things, she kills her past self, puts her body in the trunk of the car, and gets in the car with her son to drive him to school. The accident happens again, and once again, her son dies; the outcome isn't any different. Jess returns to the harbor, set on trying again, unable to accept the death of her son, and the role she played in it. 

Back to the water. Back to the ship. Back to the punishment. Whether it's happening in a twisted after-life, or a representation of what's going on in her psyche, the result is the same: an eternal torture. 

Side note: I've always felt that this dynamic seems somewhat similar to what I observed in Manchester by the Sea, a movie about Lee, a man who accidentally causes the deaths of his three young children when he forgets to put a screen on the fireplace one night. He is never able to move past it, forever stuck in that moment, steeped in guilt and shame. When I say that the events of Triangle could be a representation of what's going on in Jess's mind rather than the representation of a "Sisyphian afterlife", it would mean that she's in the same place as Lee, but the movie chooses to represent it through the cruise ship scenario.

The interesting thing, though, is that both water interpretations can be applied at the same time. You can reject the eternal punishment interpretation in favour of a metaphorical representation of her inability to heal due to her guilt, but with regards to how the water functions and what it represents in the story, there is no conflict between the two options.  

 

Identity 

Last, but certainly not least, is the movie Identity. In this movie, a terrible rainstorm strands a number of strangers together in an isolated motel. One by one, they are murdered; who is doing it, and why?

It turns out that the entire scenario is a representation of what's going on inside another man's mind: a killer who has committed several murders and who seems to have dissociative identity disorder. While working with the doctor, the man's identities disappear, one by one - hence their murders in the motel scenario. 

Still from Identity.

The ever-present rain, which keeps these personalities from leaving the motel and keeps others from getting to the motel, is a representation of the mental isolation and psychological turmoil within this man's head - similar to how the cruise ship in the middle of the ocean functions in Triangle, if we take a mental-representation approach to understanding the events of that movie. It is also a forced judgement of sorts; these personalities are being culled, with the guidance of the doctor, but in a violent way that doesn't espouse healing. In a horrific twist, all that remains is the personality that is the killer, and it seems the doctor's therapeutic approach is a failure. 

In this case, the water is a cage. It represents an isolation, and a condition through which there is no escape. They're all in a fishbowl, and one by one, they're going down. Trapped in the mind of the man who created them to shield him from the traumas of his past. But there is a reckoning; despite their presence as a coping mechanism, ultimately the part of him that is the killer comes into its own and prevails. 

 

Other Ways to Use Water Symbolism

Water is often utilized as a way to blur the lines between what is real and what is not. This is sometimes connected to the idea that water can be seen as a gateway through which one can access "another world", whether that's the afterlife, another reality, another realm, or whatever else you can think of. We can see the way this is used in all of the movies I've discussed above. 

In The Ring, water plays a crucial role in the transporting of Samara from her well to the television she climbs out of. The water transcends these physical barriers, just as Samara transcends them - or perhaps that is what allows Samara to do so. Nevertheless, it remains an interesting (though somewhat on-the-nose) look at reality versus fiction (a good concept to explore in a movie that might also have something to do with journalism and media). In Triangle, the water represents a space that is isolated and wherein things take place that defy the laws of reality. Doubles keep showing up and time keeps looping. In Identity, the water is a barrier which delineates the borders of the killer's mind, an imagining of a small, contained space that harbors a range of personalities, all of which are being destroyed one by one, without the chance of escape. 

Water is also a reflective tool, often used to represent the inner workings of a character's mind. We've already touched upon this as we've spoken about how the water in the movies above can represent the character's mental state or condition, but there's more to work with. A character driving past a roiling ocean - this can symbolize the rage within them. A character standing in the rain and letting it drench them - this can symbolize an acceptance. 

Dark water that shows nothing beneath the surface can hint at a hidden past or background, something we don't yet know about a character. It could also hint at something dangerous or immoral, especially since clear water is often linked to purity, and thus dark water tends to feel markedly unsettling. Moreover, stagnant water in particular has a very unclean profile, so the water that Samara's body is in at the bottom of the well, for example, is water that is stagnant, defiled, and festers with the horror which took place in it.

Since we're on the topic, there's also a running connection in The Ring, The Ring Two, and Triangle between water and motherhood. There might be something to be said about babies, being held in amniotic fluid before their birth into the world, and the role that water plays in such an important process. The life-giving and life-maintaining characteristic of water further reinforces this link: mothers, too, give life to their children and maintain it. The contrast, then, of having a mother who harms her child - or kills her child - rather than keeping it nurtured and protected and alive is a stark one. 

In other movies, water is frightening only because it reveals truth; nothing can stay hidden in under the surface forever. For example, in the movie Gothika, water is always involved when the main character is being haunted by the ghost of a furious woman. Moreover, as she learns more and uncovers the truth of her husband's terrible crimes, she's constantly shown in water-related settings - the pouring rain, the swimming pool, and so on. 

If you've watched or read other kinds of horror fiction, consider if water was at all involved in the stories, and what kind of a role it played. Even if it's just in the background of one scene, there might be more to it than just that it exists in that scene. It might be trying to show you more about the character or the story than what can be gleaned at first glance.

What are some other ways that water is used as a symbol in horror?

If you want to get to a point where you can analyze horror stories, break them down and interpret them through various different perspectives and lenses, this is one of the skills taught through my horror writing course, Zombie March. It's a critical skill for horror writers who want to craft powerful and lingering horror stories, and it's only one of many different techniques and skills taught in the course.

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