In the short story "Forever Overhead-, a boy asks to go to the pool for his thirteenth birthday. David Foster Wallace uses the situation to draw a stunning parallel between an afternoon at the pool and the process of maturation. During this hormone filled afternoon at the pool, the boy sets his eyes on the high dive, leaving the children's area of the pool and joining the adults. The line for this diving board, the leap off of it, and every other detail in the story are in some way symbolic of the maturing process. The symbolism is presented in such a way that it becomes clear that the author believes maturity occurs in stages, each with very different characteristics. The set-up of the pool defines each different stage of life, the activities taking place in each section represent emotions and interests at each stage in life, the line for the diving board represents the time of the boy's adolescence, and the leap from the high dive represents his actual transition from childhood to adulthood.
The first descriptions of the pool correlate strongly with certain aspects of male adolescence, such as semen production, creating a foundation for the link between growing up and the events that take place. When the pool is first introduced into the story, it is compared to the semen that the boy is just beginning to produce. Wallace writes, "The smell is, more than anything, like this swimming pool: a bleached sweet salt, a flower with chemical petals- (5). The author chooses to use the scent of the semen as the primary comparison to the pool because it is a strong smell that is different than any other produced by the boy in the past just as the scent of a pool is much different than any other usual smell. The production of strong-smelling semen is one of the first clues that adulthood is near, just as the scent of the chlorine is the first clue that a pool is near.
