The Canyon's Edge

Nora’s narrative switch from prose to poetry illustrates her emotional and psychological way of coping with the flash flood. Encompassing many different poetic forms and devices, Nora’s poetry intimately connects the story to her thoughts and emotions. As she struggles to physically survive the raging waters, she also wrestles with complex feelings about the immediate loss of her father and the shooting death of her mother. The book’s main themes—Healing From Trauma, The Keys to Survival, and Finding the Courage to Live—expand in this section, supported by the symbolism of walls and canyons.

Nora uses poetry as a coping mechanism—a way to manage situations and feelings that threaten to overwhelm her. The flash flood is a terrifying, traumatic event that catalyzes Nora to change her narrative style. This change has a dramatic effect, conveying a sense of immediacy and elevating the narrative tension. Nora’s poems connect the story closely to her feelings. Most of her poems are in free verse—that is, they lack a consistent rhyme scheme or specific meter but instead imitate natural speech patterns. The poems use various poetic sound devices like alliteration, assonance, consonance, and repetition as well as devices like enjambment to create flow and natural rhythm. In “Why?” the repeated use of words that start with the prefix “un” emphasizes Nora’s negative feelings of helplessness and inadequacy: “Unanchored. / Untethered. / Unpredictable. / Unable to see” (57). In “Not Real,” Nora uses sibilance (and assonance) to describe her night after her nightmare: “Shivering, / shuddering, / shaking, / quaking / all night long” (84). The initial “sh” sound of the first three lines (soft sounds made by pushing air out through closed teeth) reflects Nora’s whispering, hushed, and fearful mood.

In addition, Nora consciously manipulates how the poem visually appears on the page. The typography—how words and lines are spaced and grouped together and the use of white space around them—influences the impression and impact of her poems. In “One Raging River,” for example, the text visually mirrors the poem’s content. Nora imagines the rain in the distant mountains swelling creeks into a single river that rushes down the slender canyon. The first line in the poem stretches across the page, while each following line is shorter, tapering down to the last line, which is a single word. Visually, the poem appears to narrow into a canyon. Like in “Nightmare,” white space between words in the statement “I am going to die” slows reading, creates suspense, and emphasizes meaning (75).

Several poems in this section illustrate or use aspects of different poetic forms and reveal Nora’s actions and feelings about events. “Living Water” includes lines that form a shape, a characteristic of concrete poetry. Six curved lines follow each other around a circle, shaping the swirling, whirlpool that they describe. “Lie” is an acrostic poem. The first letter of each line spells out a single word, “TORMENTOR,” which describes the Beast. The poem’s content expresses Nora’s lie—her denial that the Beast is real—while vertically they acknowledge the Beast’s existence.

In other poems, Nora includes a countdown (“Eight Seconds”), a list (“The Second Time”), and a comparison of pros and cons (“But”). Each form reflects her thoughts in the moment. One of the more formal poetic forms because of its structured syllabic pattern is the haiku “Shame,” which Nora uses to organize Mary’s advice. Nora’s use of many different forms and devices helps keep the story engaging, sustains the novel’s rapid pace, and reveals her intimate thoughts and emotions.

Notably, Part 2 also contains illustrations and visual effects that complement the narrative switch to poetry, enhancing the section’s organic feeling of fluidity. Layered shades of gray flow across the bottom of the pages, suggesting hills or the canyon floor. Several poems—including “Eight Seconds,” “Dad’s Height,” and “Endless Walls”—feature tapering shades of gray on the outer page of each two-page spread, echoing the canyon walls. A shadowy image of a coyote appears in “Rebuild.” The artwork helps convey the feeling of both the physical desert landscape that Nora is experiencing and the internal landscape of her mind.

The Keys to Survival is the theme that dominates this section as Nora fights to survive not only physical and natural challenges but also mental and emotional ones. However, Nora has internalized Dad’s survival lessons and shows extreme physical courage and fortitude in hanging onto the canyon wall, recognizing the dangers of the desert at night, and understanding the need to wait until the mud dries before searching for Dad. She endures significant physical injuries: abrasions from sliding down the wall, muscle fatigue, exhaustion, and near hypothermia.

Equally as painful are her emotional wounds. Several of Nora’s greatest fears seem to be realized. She loses her other parent, the “last person in [her] life” (52). In this situation, given her lack of support and resources, her fear of dying is legitimate. Her mental walls that have repressed the memory of the shooting are crumbling. Nora tries to assure herself that Dad is alive, but her self-talk in this section reflects pessimism and helplessness.

Nora comments, “I have nothing left. Except my life” (52). Her statement reflects these feelings of hopelessness but hints at embracing life and the book’s Finding the Courage to Live theme. Because she can’t see what the future holds or find answers to the unanswerable question “Why?” she’s terrified of dying and feels that her life is meaningless. Although Mary’s voice reminds Nora to rewrite her nightmare and show her inner strength, she asserts that she isn’t strong, brave, or powerful. At this point, Nora wishes for others to save her: for Dad to return and find her and for Mom’s comfort.

Nora’s “unhelpful, unhealthy” questioning, self-doubt, and guilt reveal that she’s still wrestling with the traumatic loss of her mother and her own near death, echoing the Healing From Trauma theme. Nora hasn’t done the work to confront her fears and grief and begin to heal. In “But,” she reveals that she feels guilty for Mom’s death, thinking that had it not been her birthday, Mom would be alive. Nora also feels guilty for hurting Dad with her mean comment—and for the fact that both parents sacrificed themselves for her. She implies that Sofía Moreno did the same.

In the canyon, Nora is alone with the fears and thoughts she usually shies away from and separated from many of her coping aids. While holding onto the canyon walls protects Nora from falling into the water, the walls also trap Nora in the canyon, much as her mental walls keep out things she doesn’t want to think about—like her nightmare and the shooting—but also keep her from moving forward.