What is the What: Book 1, Ch. 13 - Book 2, Ch. 16

In this reading, I noticed symbols having to do with water: rain and a river. Thomas Foster mentions in How to Read Literature Like a Professor that water usually represents cleansing and purity. However, in Chapter 14 of What is the What, this symbolism did not hold true. Foster had stated that at times, water in the form of rain or body of water could actually mean the opposite: dirty and impure. When it rains in Chapter 14, after the Lost Boys had been walking days through the desert without much food and no water , I had expected that they would be revived by the rain. At first, this was the case, but then the rain became their "curse." Instead of "cleansing" the boys, the rain made the ground muddy and difficult to walk in. The boys were drenched and filthy, and all they longed for after that was for dry ground. The other symbol, the river Gilo, also did not follow the expected symbolism. Foster said that if a character emerges from a body of water--like a river--after being in it, that character and his circumstances will be changed. However, when the Lost Boys crossed the Gilo River and entered Ethiopia, their lives did not change at all. They were still the Lost Boys: hungry, sick, and tired. Achak and his companions were not transformed, nor did they feel any different. All they felt was disappointment.