The Sea

You know it, you love it, you splash around in it on hot summer days (even after having seen Jaws). We're talking about the saltiest symbol around: the sea.

Since the first humans could sit around and think Deep Thoughts, they've been doing so within view of the nearest body of water. (Although the open desert or prairie ain't bad, either.) And ever since they started writing—well, just take a look at this list of sea-obsessed titles:

The Old Man and the Sea
The Waves
The Wide Sargasso Sea
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Not to mention Jack London's The Sea Wolf, Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea, Edgar Allan Poe's "The City in the Sea"…

…you get the point. And this is because the symbolism associated with the sea is as deep as, well,  the sea itself.

So it's no shocker that the sea weighs in as the heftiest symbol around in a book called The Great Wide Sea.

Now You Sea Me, Now You Don't

When Christine Byron dies in a car accident, her family feels lost in their grief. You might even say they're adrift—hey-o. The Byrons flee their normal lives and take to the sea, which we can read as a symbol of life. The waves can be calm and soothing, but they can also cause trouble—sometimes without warning.

Usually, when you're steering a boat, it's like steering a car—you aim yourself in the right direction and move the tiller a little this way or that way to keep on course. Occasionally, a stronger puff of wind or a sudden wave pushes you off—like a bump on the road or a car that swings too far into your lane. But you correct. You get back on course. (26.5)

That's sort of how life works, too. Your day-to-day activities are smooth and steady until a shakeup comes along. Sometimes that shakeup is minor, like failing a test. Sometimes it's something serious, like your mom dying.

Ben's emotional journey is about trying to get back on course after his mother's death. The waves have been throwing him and his family around, both literally and figuratively. At the end of the story, he returns to dry land, symbolizing that his life is back on track.