"Men Under Water" - Wu

Lombreglia’s “Men Under Water”, reads as a frustrated experience from above – above on ground, on the earth, as human beings. The relationship between the narrator and Gunther speak to every human’s want for something more and something inexplicable that must be explained. The story is filled with routine from the narrator’s regular quitting of his job to the constant creating of new screenplays. The desperation for routine to provide results and answers is felt through throughout the piece via Gunther’s unceasingly lively attitude toward beginnings and creation. It seems as though every day working on the earth to try to create something, to produce something, (namely the screenplays) are in effort to answer that innate human question of: “What am I worth?” Through the narrator’s struggle of what he thinks is just a monetary reliance upon Gunther, turns out to be really a struggle for the narrator’s sense of purpose and belonging. It is Gunther’s sense of belonging that he offers to the narrator which is finally understood under earth amidst the silence of water. Living and breathing with each other under the depths of water, does the narrator find place and answers to his worth that seems so convoluted above on earth.