An Analysis of “Floating”:

“Floating” by Karen Brennan is a story about a woman who believes she can float or levitate. The authors target audience is people that have had depressing things occur in their lifetime, or even more specifically, women that have gone through miscarriages. The story is told through the perspective of a woman and I think that the author did this to show that if guilt and pain eat at a person this is what can happen. The author uses symbolism to get her point across. The story is told in the first person and no names mentioned in the story because it makes it more relatable to other people. The author portrays a woman who was pregnant, had a miscarriage and is depressed; she is also delusional and believes her
To this woman the baby was a feeling of pride and now losing this baby is a feeling of utmost loss, “I wish her well” (304). This woman knows that her child is gone deep done and she cannot be there to protect her child, but she wishes her child only good things wherever she is. The woman in “Floating” lost her baby and is incredibly sad, but she is also delusional. This woman was incredibly unsettled by the loss of her child. She cannot cope with the loss of her child yet, so her mind has created a cocoon for her. This woman is so far gone that she believes her baby is alive, “She had been crying for two days straight and had survived” (302). This woman also believes that she is keeping her baby alive in a drawer, “I put the baby in a drawer lined with dark blue velvet” (303). This woman also believes she can float or levitate and is constantly trying to show her husband what she can do, “My husband was in the living room. I said, Look what I can do! and I floated up… He wasn’t shocked but annoyed” (302). Her husband does not want to feed into her delusion, he wants to help her get better, not help her get worse. She is not physically floating, but mentally floating. She is floating because she is neither here nor there. In a technical sense her body is here on earth, but her soul is not. Her soul is truly with her baby girl up in heaven. Her floating is really in