The Relation Between A Woman and an Amphibian Man in The Novel the Shape of Water

Abstract

The Shape of Water is a novel by Guillermo Del Toro's. The setting is Baltimore towards the end of John F Kennedy’s presidency or, as the narrator puts it, during “the last days of a fair prince’s reign”. Its heroine is Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a white woman who has been unable to speak ever since her throat was slashed as a baby, and who now works as a janitor in a US government aerospace laboratory alongside her black friend Zelda (Octavia Spencer). The laboratory’s latest secret “asset” is a Creature from the Black Lagoon lookalike listed in the end credits as Amphibian Man (Doug Jones). Having been captured in the Amazon by the brutal Strickland (Michael Shannon), the Amphibian’s days are numbered unless Elisa can break him out.