Confluence is the coming together of people. It is the idea that people adjust to meet the needs of others and evolve as they go through life. People learn from events that occur in their lives and alter characteristics they have. "It is our inward journey that leads us through time-forward or back, seldom in a straight line, most often spiraling. Each of us in moving, changing, with respect to others. As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover; and most intensely do we experience this when our separate journeys converge. Our living experience at those meeting points is one of the charged dramatic fields of fiction."(Welty 102). .
In The Color of Water, the idea of confluence was often expressed. James McBride was a black boy who had to deal with racial matters. With his mother being white, he was often looked down upon by other blacks and was embarrassed of her. Throughout his book, he changed and evolved to cope with these issues. "Yet I myself had no idea who I was. I loved my mother yet looked nothing like her." (Page 91). James went through many hard times, but in the end, he came out successful. .
Everyone around James was black, including all his siblings and his stepfather. His mother was the only person he associated with that was white. He didn't understand why he had to be the one with a white mother and James wanted to have a normal black life. "I had reached a point where I was ashamed of her and didn't want the world to see my white mother." (page 100). If James saw his mother on the street walking, he would quickly turn on another street to avoid her. His mother would be on the street and people on the street would be making fun of her. She just went on like they weren't saying anything, completely ignoring all of their comments and James hated her for it. He just wanted her to stay inside all day, to keep him from embarrassment. .
He was confluent because of this.