The Sea, The Sea

Iris Murdoch won the Booker Prize in 1978 for this her 19^th novel.  When I posted on Facebook about my summer project to read novels in which the ocean is a lead character, my friend Michelle suggested this one.  I’m glad I read it.

My favorite character in this novel, The Sea, The Sea, was – the sea.

As for the novel’s human characters, the recently retired Charles Arrowby and his various friends who visit him over the course of a couple months in his strange old house on the Northwest England coast – it was hard for me to relate to or care for any of them. 

Arrowby has left a very public urban life in the theater for what he expects to be years of quiet seaside reflection.  But his previous life, like the ocean, never stops crashing at his door. Friends, ex -lovers, complicated relationships keep showing up.  Despite all this traffic, he is drawn daily to the ocean.  He immerses himself in the sea, but there is always a sense of danger. Tension builds, and finally as expected, he almost drowns.  Tragically, the next day, he watches helplessly as a dear friend does die in the waves. 

I liked the ocean character because it remains authentically itself, some days calm, others rough, inviting or lethal, relentless.  There is no doubting its truth or power.  It daily mirrors Arrowby’s mood, sometimes bright and full of possibility, but more often it foreshadows his next disappointment and disaster. 

But while the ocean was real, I never could quite believe the authenticity of these people.  Were they telling the truth, would they think of anyone besides themselves, had they really done what they claimed?  Murdoch creates this confusion, intentionally I think, by writing the novel in the form of Arrowby’s rambling memoir, in these first months of his completely new life.  I came to realize that he is what literary critics call “an unreliable narrator.”  Which means the reader has to read suspiciously.  Was he really such a success?  Whose were those hands who pushed him in the ocean? Does Mary really want him to rescue her from her supposedly violent husband?

Describing the ocean with words is really hard, just as painting a wave challenges any artist.    Murdoch is a genius at painting the ocean’s many moods.  I loved the daily weather reports: “I got up and went to the window.  It was about six o’clock and the sun had been up for some time.  Cool summer weather had come back with a misty sky and a calm sea.  The water was a very pale luminous grey-blue, almost white, the same colour as the sky, shifting with a quick small dancing movement, and scattered by the misted sun with little explosions of metallic pale-gold light.  It had the look of a happy sea and I felt I was seeing it through Titus’s eyes.”

I haven’t read any other Iris Murdoch novels, but I gather from articles I’ve read that she often writes from the perspective of a sort of sad failed male protagonist, so this is nothing new.  There are four women characters, former lovers and actresses, whom Arrowby thinks adore him, but they eventually all reject him.  (Male unreliable narrator.)  There are two intriguing male characters, Arrowby’s mysterious cousin, the Buddhist spy, and the young homoerotic Titus, who might have been his son.  Titus arrives mysteriously, loves the sea, swims there daily in the nude.  And of course, he, the youngest and strongest of them all, drowns.

Arrowby has two sweet encounters with sea creatures.  Soon after he moves in he sees a giant sea monster.  He doesn’t quite trust this vision, but it is a scary reminder of the ocean’s power and mystery.   And then near the end, after months of people asking, “Have you seen the seals?” he finally encounters them.  After all this despair and drowning and confusion, these simple dark sea creatures welcome him with blessing.

After his encounter with the seals, Arrowby seems finally ready to go back to London.  As the book ends he has sold the seaside house and is back far from the waves.   But he is changed, much more accepting and realistic, more generous, less snooty.  It’s as if the sea cleansed him, washed him in and out.  Even though the ocean led to the deaths of some dear ones, Titus and his cousin, it has sent him safely back home. 

I’m not selling this book very much.  It’s a slog.  But I’m glad I read it. I was reminded that I too have chosen to live out my retirement days near the ocean.  Like Charles Arrowby, I will keep my eyes out for the scary sea monsters and the blessing seals.  I will dive in but remember the ocean’s power.  Like him I know that the gift of retirement years also brings us so many tragic losses of dear ones. 

I am reminded that I, like Arrowby, reflect on life by writing (unreliably?) inside my house by the sea. 

I am grateful for the waves, every day, relentless on the shore.

Copyright © 2018 Deborah Streeter