SOURCE: “Definitions of a Fool: Alice Munro's ‘Walking on Water’ and Margaret Atwood's Two Stories about Emma: ‘The Whirlpool Rapids’ and ‘Walking on Water,’” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 28, No. 2, Spring, 1991, pp. 138–46.

In the following essay, Carrington finds parallels between Alice Munro's “Walking on Water” and Margaret Atwood's “The Whirlpool Rapids” and “Walking on Water.”

In 1974 Alice Munro published “Walking on Water” in Something I've Been Meaning To Tell You. In 1986 Margaret Atwood also published a short story entitled “Walking on Water.” Appearing originally in Chatelaine, it was republished in a longer version in the second, American edition of Bluebeard's Egg.¹ In both Munro's and Atwood's stories, the titles' Biblical allusion refers to a young character who risks drowning by trying to walk on water. In both stories this attempt is ironically labeled the activity of a fool. These similarities, especially in the light of Atwood's later...