Summary of the Lesson

'Deep Water' is William O. Douglas's true, first-person account of how he developed an intense fear of water in boyhood and how, as an adult, he deliberately overcame it. A key autobiographical prose piece in the NCERT Flamingo textbook for Class 12, the summary below follows the events in order.

The first fright at the beach

Douglas traces the beginnings of his aversion to water to his early childhood. When he was three or four years old, his father took him to a beach in California. There, as they stood together in the surf, a strong wave suddenly knocked him off his feet and swept over him, burying him in water. Although his father was beside him and he was not really in danger, the sheer force of the water frightened him badly and left him with an early dislike and distrust of it.

The near-drowning at the pool

The decisive experience came a few years later, when Douglas was about ten or eleven, at the Y.M.C.A. pool in Yakima. He had chosen the pool because it seemed safe, while his mother had warned him against the treacherous Yakima River. One day he went there alone and, while he was sitting at the edge waiting for others, a big, older boy of about eighteen picked him up as a joke and tossed him into the nine-foot deep end. Douglas sank to the bottom, badly frightened. He planned, as he went down, to spring up from the floor of the pool and reach the surface, but each time he came up he could not stay afloat and sank again. He went down and rose three times, swallowing water and growing more terrified, until at last his strength failed, a strange calm swept over him, and he lost consciousness. He was pulled out and revived, but from that day the terror of water was fixed deep in his mind.

Years of haunting fear

For many years afterwards this fear followed Douglas everywhere and ruined his enjoyment of water sports. Whenever he went near lakes, rivers or pools -- whether to swim, fish, boat or canoe -- the old dread would return and rob him of any pleasure. The memory of the pool clung to him and held him back, and he was unable to shake it off on his own.

The decision to overcome the fear

As an adult, Douglas finally resolved to conquer this fear rather than let it master him for the rest of his life. He hired a professional swimming instructor and set about learning to swim in a careful, systematic way. The instructor built up his skills piece by piece -- teaching him to breathe correctly, to move his legs and arms, and to put the parts together -- until, over several months, Douglas was able to swim.

Testing and defeating the terror

Even after he had learned the mechanics of swimming, Douglas found that a shadow of the old fear could still creep back. Determined to be completely free of it, he deliberately put himself to the test. He swam the length of the pool alone, then swam two miles across Lake Wentworth in New Hampshire, and finally went to Warm Lake in the Cascades, where he swam across and back. When no trace of the terror returned, he shouted with joy and knew for certain that he had truly conquered his fear.

The lesson learned …