The Shark Swimmer Essay Questions

The Shark Swimmers Essay

In the story, “The Shark Swimmers,” starts with how most kids are when they are young. The three boys are innocent just going to their favorite show on the beach admiring the cutest girl in their school. The author, Melissa Fraterrigo, is known for many other books including her novel Glory Days (Melissa). She is also known for her short story collection The Longest Pregnancy (Melissa). Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in more than forty literary journals and anthologies from Shebnandoah and The Massachusetts Review to storySouth, and Notre Dame Review (Melissa).

The main characters in this story are, Brad, who we find out very soon is head over heels for Mariona, who is the second main character and the best shark swimmer and the cutest girl in their school. Although all of them are in love with Mariona you can tell Brad is in love with her the most because in the first interaction between Brad and Mariona he says, “Does this mean you want to grab a burger with me? (Fraterrigo 5). This comes right after Mariona says, “A beautiful woman will fall in love with you” (Fraterrigo 5). There are two supporting characters in this story named Tim and Derrick. We don’t get to know much about them other than Tim’s parents are about to get

divorced which ends up not happening at first and Derrick is told he is to invent a new car, which this is all told by Mariona. This story mainly takes place on the beach at the Shark Swimmers show and at the boardwalk on the beach as found out throughout the story.
Mariona is a part of her parent’s shark swimmers show however, she wants to quit and become a fortune teller, which is why she predicted all of this for Brad, Tim, and Derrick. As we find out further in the story she is a pretty good fortune teller. Just days after Mariona told Tim his fortune the guys asked him if his parents decided to get divorced and he told them that, “…. the divorce papers had been put away and that his parents had decided to remain together” (Fraterrigo 6). After this happened the boys became Mariona’s biggest fans. They soon realized that Mariona was dissatisfied with her life as a shark swimmer and dreamed of a life where she worked on land.
One day they were talking to Dana, another classmate of theirs, who told them Mariona would draw hearts on her binders and she said that, “She would line the outside of the heart with a thick band or add lacy trimmings.

She always added M + J.” (Fraterrigo 6). Knowing this all the boys thought she had a boyfriend and Brad was the one that took this the hardest. This is the start of the downfall of Brad. Brad had been devastated with this news and even said, “Damn her” (Fraterrigo 8). One day Brad had snuck off one day without telling the rest of the guys where he was going so they followed him to see what he was doing. They followed him all the way to this house, which ended up being Mariona’s

house.
They saw Mariona’s mother answer the door and, “she scooped Brad into her arms and we watched him kiss her, his hands playing with the hem of her dress” (Fraterrigo 9). They were in shock at what they just saw and wondered when Brad had meet her mother or when this all started, however they were also impressed. I have two theories on why this happened: either he was doing this as a way to get back at Mariona or one day he went there looking for her and her mother caught feelings for like her husband was not giving her attention anymore. They wanted to ask Brad a million questions but the decided to keep this a secret. They also wondered why this was happening because Mariona’s parents were still married. Weeks later Mariona had quit swimming in the show and her mother had announced that she was pregnant.
The boys could not help but think about what they saw and that there could be a link between this pregnancy and Brad. At this point Mariona was just in a T-shirt and shorts at the showing carrying buckets of fish and watching the show like everyone else. I think that when Mariona found out she was pregnant she saw it as a way out of this life she did not want. Mariona’s mother decided to have a water birth in the ocean and they made it happen at the same time as a Saturday show. On the day of the birth Brad was acting very weird that day saying that swimming with the sharks was “… nothing special” and “Anyone can do it” (Fraterrigo 11). When Mariona’s mother gave birth, they released the sharks and suddenly Brad ran to the water to swim with the sharks causing everyone to go crazy.
The doctor dropped the baby, and everyone rushed to save Brad and the baby. The baby ended up being stillborn and it was already dead when it was birthed. “Brad was fined for obstructing the performance and was forbidden from attending future shows” (Fraterrigo 13). This all happen as they were Juniors in high school and after this incident Brad started smoking cigarettes. One of the nights after this happened they saw Brad at the boardwalk and “He offered us cigarettes from his own pack, but only Derrick was brave enough to try one” (Fraterrigo 14). This is probably how Brad numbed some of the pain he felt when he knew he could not be with Mariona.
The boys still wondered if the baby was Brad’s however, no one wanted to ask because Brad did not know that they knew about him and Mariona’s mother. Eventually, Mariona started performing again when they were all going into their senior year. I am sure she did this to make her parents feel better about the whole situation. Later in the summer they snuck into Mariona’s final show not knowing what would happen in that show. They still do not know how it happen a few think that Mariona purposely threw herself off the shark however, others believe that she misplaced her foot. Since she was a very good fortune teller I think she knew this was going to happen so that is why she tried to defend herself right away trying to change the inevitable. Either way she fell of the shark and tried to get away and even punched the shark right under the eye.
“It only took one bite, one chunk of flesh before releasing its jaw and leaving Mariona in the water, inhaling frantically on her back” (Fraterrigo 16-17). After that happened everyone found out that Mariona had lost her left foot up to her ankle. “Later that summer, we found out Brad impregnated a girl one town over” (Fraterrigo 17). He more than likely started sleeping around when he knew about Mariona and her boyfriend which is a normal reaction for some guys. As you can see finding out about Mariona and her boyfriend earlier in the story was definitely the fall of Brad from being innocent. One day the Dad of the girl came to Brad demanding he marry her and after that he left town, and no one ever saw him again. Which I believe did not really surprise anyone that was looking at the path he was taking in his life.
For years after Mariona lost her foot she would still show up to the shows with her boyfriend wearing a prosthetic foot. She also opened up her own fortune telling booth however, the boys never visited her there. The shark swimmers show was never the same after Mariona’s final show and eventually her parents became too old to do the show anymore and they stopped performing. Eventually, Mariona moved away with her boyfriend and the boys can only imagine that, “Mariona has her own little girl now and that she takes her swimming in the ocean and together they float on their backs looking up at the sky” (Fraterrigo 17).
Mariona’s final show will always remain in the boy’s minds as they sat there and just watched what happened to her. “We watched the ambulances scream on the sand, saw her mother hysterically wailing as her husband carried Mariona out of the water and onto the land, his daughter’s blood cloaking his arm and torso, streaks dribbling from his swimsuit down his own legs” (Fraterrigo 17-18). They will never forget Mariona’s ghostly white face as she had already fainted. They were sitting there with photos of Mariona for her to sign but when it all happened they no longer cared about keeping her photo safe and almost lost them to the wind.
This was a great story and it really kept you involved the whole time not knowing what was going to happen next. It shows what love can do to someone when they find out that they cannot have the one they have fallen for. Once Brad found out she had a boyfriend it made him go into a bad spiral that messed up his life and turned him from an innocent boy to a delinquent. This story also shows us how life can change in a split second as it did for Mariona’s mother, who lost her baby to death, and Mariona, who lost her foot to the shark. Overall, I would recommend this story to anyone that loves short stories with a true meaning to the story.