Water as Salvation and Destruction?

In a lot of the Heaney poems we read, there was a very strong evident and strong connection that he (and his family before him) felt to the earth. The roots that were planted in his head by his father awoke in him a connection to the elements that fill Ireland. I don't have the book of poems in front of me, but I at least remember that there were several poems about his connection to the water (or the shoreline) and the land of his ancestors. The presence of elemental connections in his poems tie him to the past, but also discovers that they make up who he is.

In "Girl Is A Half Formed Thing," we can trace a theme of elemental connections throughout the novel. The strongest ones are the motifs of suffocation (a lack of air), and drowning (or being cleansed) in water. There are also roots here, except they're broken roots in the brother's  head. Throughout the first parts of the book, there are also quite a few times when the girl refers to her and her friends in relation to the muddy, sloppy earth. In the last section (page 194), there is the long passage about the dream she has that ties her (and every human) to the earth and their ultimate return to it in death.

Using these themes, I'm going to argue that Irish people are being portrayed as "nature" itself. Their relation to the earth and the elements have strong Pagan ties,  but there is a strong presence of Christian dominance in both Heaney and McBride. In Christianity, water is meant to cleanse us of our sins and provide us with hope for forgiveness. For the Irish "pagans," however, water is the opposite of hope because it cuts them off from the rest of the world, symbolizing the encroaching flood and destruction of their beautiful land (at the hands of the Christian invaders). In "Girl," as religion suppresses her natural self (the grandfather, the mother), she looks for salvation in the earth and the water. Instead, it ends up being her demise, just as it will be Ireland's.