Lost at sea on a sinking ship. Reading Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea
Spoiler warning. Go buy this book though. It’s bloody good.
Thankfully, the repetition of the sea means that we won’t get too confused with John Banville’s masterpiece, The Sea. But it does make you wonder why the repetition? Is the sea that important that it needed to be mentioned twice in the title? Apparently so. This article from Literary Hub digs pretty deep and it gives obscure angles to view the book. So I’d highly recommend reading that too.
But this interpretation is opaque, like the novel (and the Murdoch novels that I’ve read so far), much of it is ambiguous, much of it is up to us to fill the gaps. Murdoch writes beautifully, though fluidly, that if you have a long weekend with no plans with the missus or your mates you could finish it before you start work again the following week. But it is not an easy read. Not because of the language, but because of Charles Arrowby, whose voice we hear from the beginning to the end of the book.
The failed escape of Charles Arrowby
Arrowby is in the right side of sixties, and as far as we know, not ugly. He’s a freshly retired theatre director, who didn’t have equal success as an actor or a playwright. His name is well-known enough, but his face not so. He’s never married, as far as he knows, childless. He’d just bought a house in the north coast of England near the sea, and looking for solitude so that he can learn how to be “good”. He’s also a giant cunt.
The house he bought, Shruff End, also has a character of its own. Charles knew very little about its previous owner, and his solitude is often bothered by noises and things being misplaced around the house. He goes for a swim (naked) just near the rocks, and very early on, he saw a coiling black serpent coming out of the sea, looking directly at him. He does not know whether this is an illusion or not, and introspected heavily without coming to any conclusion.
In the meantime, he’s getting visits from past lovers and admirers, who wanted him still and actively pursuing him, even for some, threatening his happiness if he’d gone for another. By coincidence, his first love is also a resident nearby, a Mary Hartley, who he had not seen for about forty years and surprisingly, finds out abruptly that he was still in love with her. The trouble is that Hartley, as he called her way back when, is married to a rather unpleasant character in Ben Fitch, a handicapped ex-soldier.
With this new unhealthy obsession of rescuing the love of his life from the clutches of her maniacal husband, Charles set off on his way, trying to remove all obstacles and using those around him to manipulate Hartley to go to his side, including Hartley’s adopted son Titus, who conveniently is looking for a replacement father figure in Charles himself. Charles has a few more visitors at this time, all of them unwelcome, including the actor Gilbert, and his Buddhist James Bond-like cousin, James. And of course, his women who can’t just get rid of him off their minds.
Arrowby is as unreliable and fascinating as any unreliable narrators get
The book holds its shape through its form — a meditative journals of Charles Arrowby. This is his first time writing anything extensively that is not a play. Thus, his journal is a feeble attempt to initiate an autobiography, a reflection of his daily routines including his dietary adventures and a recollection of his pasts, especially in regards to his visitors and his one true love, Hartley.
But Charles’s journals is his sounding board. In search for the justification of his madness, and the actions to feed this madness, he finds refuge in these journals. And from here, we can really witness Charles’s amorality, who takes pleasure in causing pain on those who finds him dear, and finding justifications for his amoral actions. For example, when Charles was pushed off to the sea, he was convinced that his assassin was Ben, Hartley’s husband, though he has no evidence save for an offhanded threat.
He convinced himself that when he’d stolen Hartley (for the second time) that she would be happy, that she would be saved and what’s more to also regain her former self and beauty. And like before, that there should have been no witnesses to her “rescue”:
“There must be no more witnesses… This was indeed the condition of her freedom, why had I not seen this before? I would at last see her face changing. It was, I found, a part of my thought of the future that when she was with me Hartley would actually regain much of her old beauty…”
Doesn’t that sound just batshit crazy? Much of these contemplations is for Charles to suit his own reality — a reality where he triumphs for his goals, and all else, including those who cares about him, can go to hell. Charles is a man clearly missing his moral compass, and his love for Hartley is a selfish love, not a love which cares about her wellbeing, but a love where he could benefit in redeeming himself in the one that got away. And perhaps a love that would be wasted, as we had a glimpse during Hartley’s short sojourn in Shruff End, once he attained it.
His correspondence with Hartley also reveals this egotistical nature, as he projected that Hartley regretted her life choice of not sticking by, and that he had made it now, that he is wealthy and famous (though admittedly, a bit of an ass):
“I suspect, and forgive me for glancing at this, that you may have suffered more than one hour of remorse as you thought of me living my “exciting life” and how utterly, as it seemed, that you have lost me.”
Charles’s introspections of Hartley before he knew her situation fully included these projections that perhaps Hartley had regretted leaving him, that she had ended up with a washed up old soldier. That life with him would have been better. Equally so, he admitted that perhaps a life with Hartley would have been a more simple domestic: without the stage and without the drama.
Charles’s obsession with Hartley is coupled with pragmatic strategising which requires some level of objectivity. But this is the scary part, that Charles was able to use wild and inaccurate logic to justify his thoughts and actions. Charles, I find, is capable of being Conrad’s Kurtz if he had to run a charter boat in an African river. He is as hollow as Kurtz and he is ruled predominantly by basic emotions, which is why he put emphasis on the food that he eats, and the women whom he had relations with, though he admitted that he was not much of a sexual being. Old mate Meursault also comes to mind.
And I find Charles terrifying because of the possibility of his existence, that it is easy to slide into amorality and indifference save for fickle things. To be fickle and not know it. The horror of the book is not the supernatural elements that Charles faced in Shruff End, but Charles losing ground and scraping to remnants of his logic to justify despicable actions. By the end, we don’t see much growth in Charles, despite the heightened drama which occurred for much of the book. He is practically the same man when he first wrote about the sea from the view of his window.
The other players shining in bit roles
I have focused on Charles as he is the main voice in the book, though the other characters of the book also shines through. Charles’s counterpart and cousin James, is the level-headed voice to Charles’s maniacal meanderings. He is also a Buddhist, comes from a wealthy family (a perennial sore point for Charles), led a successful military career and a possible homosexual.
But in a way, James’s approach to life is the inverse of Charles: James is a Buddhist in search for enlightenment, the ever elusive Bodhitsava, where all his being is stripped to the bare essentials, even to mere nothingness. While James is trying to strip himself away of all worldly weight, Charles is a straw man, a hollow man who started with nothing and ends perhaps with nothing. James is the level-headed counterpart to Charles’s dangerous impulsions, someone to balance him, but someone whose advice Charles spurns.
The other ladies shine, not mentioning even, Hartley — the object of Charles’s affection. Lizzie and Rosina, from opposite ends of the spectrum of servile to psychotic, added some flavour into all the drama. It is an interesting exploration of toxic relationships, especially with an unattached, amoral man. For Charles, these women only fuel his sadism. For Charles, women should reach the unattainable heights of Shakespeare heroines, who as far as I know, often die tragic deaths.
The form of the novel and the theatre play complementary roles in The Sea, The Sea, as Charles becomes the director of his own life and making decisions to suit his script. His obsession of Hartley can perhaps be attributed to the search for drama, which may end in tragedy or a wedding itself — A Shakespearean comedy. The bit roles played by his friends (if you want to call them that) are only fillers in the theatre of his life, though at times, he really could do without them.
What is the sea ultimately?
The sea is prevalent, a heavy leitmotif in a novel already opaque in its meaning. It opens and somewhat closes the story, hiding hidden dangers and obvious beauty. From the sea, Charles’s hallucinations were born, such as the black coiling serpent, which at the end of the book converted itself to harmless and playful seals.
But it is another active character in the book, which also affected the lives of character, even ending one. The sea claimed Titus, and though his manner of death is ambiguous, the sea was the most obvious claimant. But we can also interpret the sea as Charles’s reflections and dormant subconscious. Did he want to kill Titus? There is something psychotic in Charles’s thought process.
Thus we go back to the title, that pretty little title, where the sea is repeated for emphasis, but more likely that it is representing another sea, quite separate from the real sea. It is the sea of our imperfect human nature, with tides churning in its belly, its intent to please with its beauty and deadly in its intent. It is both graceful and malevolent, it is as much the symbol of peace as it is of turbulence.
Further reading
