Surfacing can be divided into three main sections. Provide a critical summary of all three.

She decides that her father is insane and is watching them from the bushes. Her decision coincides with the group’s decision to stay and the section ends on a note of suspense. The travails that afflict the protagonist press on her so hard that she finds that “being in the air” is more painful, than “being in the water, and slips into the water.

PART II OF SURFACING –

Part II consists of chapters 9 to 19 and spans a period of one week. In this part, the narrator reflects on her disintegration, which is experienced in the bodily fragmentation. She begins to feel that she has been cut into two halves that her head has been severed from her body.

She comes to realize that she has been living in the head which is the “wrong half’. However, the confrontation with the dead body of her father brings her back to reality. In this part, the narrator makes three significant discoveries. She sees the dead body of her father, the crippling truth of the abortion dawns on her with full force and her need to keep diving into water, so that she can surface.