In The Water Is Wide, Conroy allows the reader a glimpse of his own experiences as a young Southern teacher who attempts to affect changes among virulently prejudiced South Carolina whites in the early 1970s. While his first person account serves as a journal of sorts, emphasizing Conroy's own emotional reactions to the conditions he must overcome to serve as an effective teacher, it also speaks to his personal development. He allows his own developing self awareness to contrast with the stagnation of attitudes that represents the resistance to change in the early days of integration. Raised as a racist himself, Conroy frankly confronts his own often misplaced feelings of guilt over his unenlightened past in a present in which he desperately wants to help correct what he sees as an abhorrent social system. The local superintendent's words upon learning that Conroy wants to teach at...