46 pages • 1 hour read
Rivers SolomonThe Deep
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Amaba, Yetu’s mother, saves Yetu from danger—she is lost in a state of remembering among a group of sharks. Lost in remembering and, therefore, in time, Yetu has no idea how much time has passed and is physically weakened. She has spent so much time reliving the History—the experiences of her ancestors—that she has not taken care of her body through regular eating and exercise.
When Amaba finds her, Yetu has already missed the date of the annual Remembrance—a ritual that the wajinru, her people, need to survive—by about three months, a whole mating cycle. Yetu dreads the ceremony, but her mother reminds her of its necessity: “We grow anxious and restless without you, my child. One can only go for so long without asking who am I? Where do I come from? What does it all mean?” (8).
As they travel back to the deep, Yetu fears how much the Remembrance will take out of her. She is already a sensitive creature, and because of her role as the historian, she has witnessed and held 600 years’ worth of traumatic memories. As such, she has endured more pain and suffering than any other wajinru. Amaba feeds her milk and encourages her to rest to prepare for the ceremony. Once the pain of the Remembrance is over, the historian will have a few days of peace to herself, living without the History for just a brief period. This isn’t something that Yetu looks forward to.
Chapter 2 Summary
Yetu returns to the deep, and preparations for the Remembrance are underway. There are thousands of wajinru gathered for the ceremony, who recognize each other through instinct more than memory.
Yetu and her caregiver, Nnenyo, prepare for the Remembrance. Nnenyo understands the physical and emotional burden that Yetu carries and provides her with the nourishment she needs and protection from loud noises and too-close interactions, which are intense and physically painful for Yetu. He is the oldest wajinru, and Nnenyo can remember more and is more inclined to empathize with Yetu’s position. He invites his children to give Yetu presents to celebrate the Remembrance and thank her. One of the gifts, shared by Kata, Nnenyo’s youngest child, is especially meaningful to Yetu. She holds the object tenderly and is transfixed by the remembering of it; it is a comb used by one of the wajinru foremothers to style hair.
Yetu feels a special kinship in the process of remembering, embodying an ancestor who found the comb, a small child. The narrator explains: “Yetu’s loneliness abated, overcome with the sanctity of being the vessel for another life—and in a moment like this, a child’s life, a child who’d grown into an adult and then an elder, so many lifetimes ago. Yet here they were together, one” (18). Yetu dwells in the remembering for days as the wajinru continue to prepare for the ceremony. They are building the structure that will keep them safe as they experience the History: the womb.
As the wajinru construct the womb, Yetu feeds herself and mentally prepares for the task ahead. She fears that the Remembrance might finally kill her, a fear that isolates her. Yetu argues with her amaba, reminding her that she is not “normal” and that she resents carrying the heavy burden of her people, who cannot help but fail to understand her suffering. Since they know nothing of the past and are ignorant of its tragedies, they are not equipped to understand or help Yetu.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
The opening chapters of The Deep lay out the background and exigency of the novella—that is, the specific event that spurs the text’s major conflicts and its characters’ transformation. Narrated in the third person, the novel provides Yetu’s internal, private perspective on the world. A protagonist who is tortured by The Burden of History and her duty to her people, Yetu is introduced as a quiet creature whose suffering is largely silent. These chapters lay out the basic premise of the novella, describing the wajinru society and Yetu’s role as historian. Solomon depicts her as a reluctant servant, the most sensitive historian in the wajinru’s History, who is inclined to lose herself in remembering the past and act with bitter resentment toward her people, particularly those that are closest to her.
In the opening scene, her amaba first finds her on an apparently suicidal mission among sharks, so lost in rememberings and so much pain that she’s completely disconnected from the present, her family, and her people. While Yetu is enigmatic to her amaba, the narrative reveals her true feelings, making her a well-rounded protagonist. Yetu is isolated from her people because of the nature of the historian, not just Yetu’s personality or feelings. Solomon writes: “[N]o one should have been surprised that the rememberings affected Yetu more deeply than previous historians, but then everything surprised wajinru. Their memories faded after weeks or months” (5). Without the capacity to remember, the wajinru cannot empathize with or relate to Yetu, who likewise cannot connect with them, except during the Remembrance, when all are united and experience synchronicity. With this, Solomon sets up a central theme: rather than placing The Burden of History on a single, heroic figure, Collective Memory and Cultural Identity is everyone’s responsibility. Yetu regards her people’s forgetfulness and perpetual grounding in the present as self-centered and vapid, and she even dreads the few days after the Remembrance when she is permitted to exist without the burden of History because they feel so awkwardly self-involved. This connects to several of the novella’s major themes, including The Conflict Between Self-interest and the Interests of Society. While the wajinru’s ignorance is meant to protect them from pain, the early chapters suggest that this is an unjust system, not only for the historian. The wajinru cannot remember, so they also live isolated existences, connecting only briefly and shallowly during the Remembrance.
Yetu’s capacious memory also impacts her relationship with her amaba, with whom she has had a troubled past. This is another primary conflict in the novella. Although her mother cannot remember well, she instinctually knows that they have a strained relationship, and Yetu is deeply cut by the many times that they’ve fought about her obligation to the people. This comes to a head in Chapter 2, as Yetu becomes impatient with her mother’s doting and insistence that she remember her duty—as if Yetu could ever forget it. In the final moments before the Remembrance begins, Solomon articulates this resentment when Nnenyo reminds Yetu, “You are a blessing,” and she responds, “I am what is required” (26). Their contrasting ways of understanding the historian’s role illustrate the tension created by their disproportionate relationship with suffering. All of society’s past and future depend on Yetu’s ability to sustain this life and perform the annual ritual. This conflict establishes the central, driving force in the novella: the role of history and memory in developing individual and communal senses of belonging.
Yetu feels she has been robbed of a life of her own, as well as the ability to connect with any living wajinru. Instead, she finds her deepest and most meaningful emotional connections with the ancestors whose memories she embodies through the process of remembering. When Kata gives Yetu the comb, for example, she reconnects with a child ancestor who holds the comb with wonder. She feels an emotional bond with this ancestor and a special emotional attachment to the object itself but refuses to share this memory with her mother, as “this one knowledge, this one piece of history, it was hers and no one else’s” (25). This moment highlights an important drive of Yetu’s throughout the novella: Her desire to cultivate an independent identity and internal world that is all her own. This desire carries much of the rest of the plot forward.
