Sea Story | Analysis

Indledning
Around the world, tons of plastic and microplastic floats around in the ocean, and make fish’, turtles, shellfish’, and other types of living nature in the water to victims for this, by choking to death or get wrapped in the plastic.

When you are a person that prefers the life on the ocean than the one inland, it can be hard just to let this pass by and be audience to a marine animal massacre.

The decision these types of persons will make, is the determining factor to life in the ocean, but also for themselves.

In AS Byatt’s short story “Sea Story”, Harold invites us to experience his life, through the perspective of himself that was born beside the sea and feels the absence from the sea peculi-arly painful.

Man vs nature, love, and belonging are obvious themes and the main drivers of the story.

This develops compassion for the living nature in the sea and a better understanding for the life. Consequently, the focus of this analytical essay will be on the characters, setting, themes, and message.

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Uddrag
“"I've just been offered my dream job. I'm going to be part of a team studying the life-cycle of eels. This letter is my acceptance. I'm off to the Caribbean next week."

The setting in the essay is extremely important. Most of the time the setting is on the ocean, and very short on inland in Oxford. Even it is on the inland he meets Laura;

it is not the set-ting that is the main driver. When we are on the ocean, we can feel a whole other mood. The mood creates feelings such as happy and fascinated for us.

It is created by giving us images of the setting and creates a certain feeling/mood. By choosing specific words and by weaving their connotations together, it is possible for the author to give the setting a particular atmos-phere.

This is for example seen when uses the oceans and seas real names and the names on the countries that is in the different flows, that also make it more in touch with reality.

E.g., “Sargasso Sea” , “North Anglia” , “and was then carried north past Holland to head round Denmark, past Norway to the Arctic Ocean.

… where a stream of cold water took it south into the Caribbean”. Besides this, the title is called “Sea Story”, that of course isn’t a coinci-dence.

The author wants to make us aware of the seas and oceans, already before we have started by reading the essay.

A theme is the underlying topic or the universal idea which the author wants to pass on to the us through the text. As mentioned, the themes in the essay are man vs human, love, and be-longing.

Man vs human is a theme, first of all due to the characters lifestyle on the water, and Harold mentioning that he thinks the life inland is peculiarly painful.

Besides that, we hear about the diabolical plastic waste in the ocean where most of the life in the ocean gets mur-dered by humans - “The cap detached itself and was swallowed by a green turtle which mis-took it for a glass eel.

When this turtle choked and died, the cap was picked from it remains by another turtle, which also choked. The signet ring was heavy enough to plummet down to the ocean floor, where a hagfish lunged at it, swallowed it and choked”.