Literary experience in my life with the wave Octavio Paz's extraordinary tale, "My Life with the Wave", tells exactly what the title says, the life of a man with a body of water. . Paz experiments with the norm and elevates literature to a higher level (Christ 375). He immediately plays with our imagination and lets us believe that the man has stolen “a girl from the sea”. These two beings try to establish a relationship despite their extremely different backgrounds and thus take us on a journey of discovery. The way these two characters react to each other represents the friction found in so many types of relationships. This is a love story doomed from the start but meant to be lived. Like so many other wonderful tales from Hispanic cultures, this story combines imaginative events with realism. Just as the filmmakers did in “The Milagro Beanfield War” and “Like Water for Chocolate,” Paz encourages you to believe in the incredible. You can almost visualize the wave as a self-contained water cabin foaming and pumping against invisible walls. There are impossible passages that the male character takes in this story that you can appreciate with your imagination. He calls them “his troubles” (Paz 852). The events surrounding this relationship become his secrets, leading him to distance himself from the life he once had. His relationship with water slowly develops and water's strong and passionate character is revealed. It is clear that the man's troubles are directly linked to the existence of the wave in his life. Paz presents the wave as real. She is immortal. This is proven when she is abandoned on the train when her man is arrested for smuggling...... middle of paper ...... until becoming a runoff to the sewers, the wave knows that his destiny will eventually return. to the sea because that is the nature of water. Since escaping from the train's water tank, her life has been cyclical. In this way, she is selfish, which is much more like water's true character. Paz takes the reader away from the norm, arriving in a seemingly alternative universe. It requires the reader to raise the level of understanding to a higher level (Christ 375). “My Life with the Wave” is a successful literary experiment that celebrates the ability to visualize the many combinations of relationships in our world. Works CitedChrist, Ronald, CLC, Vol 3. Ed. Carolyn Riley. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, Co., 1975. Paz, Octavio and “My Life with the Wave.” The Harper Anthology of Fiction. Ed. Sylvain Barnett. New York: HarperCollins, 1981.