Murdouch’s plot in The Sea, The Sea and the slow drip of information about Charles Arrowby's past kept my interest the entire time. She depicts the obsessive nature of jealousy and its consequences with precision. Charles Arrowby’s world begins to unfold and erode, although he refuses to admit that he is the cause of his ruin. He gradually realizes this as he finds himself strangely reunited with his “friends,” his lover’s son, and his cousin James. James in particular acts as the story’s Bodhisattva (a Buddha incarnate of sorts… there is talk of him achieving Nirvana), which allows Charles to see his self-centered nature. Charles comes to confront his demons but the ending leaves everything sort of open-ended (since the story is a sort of journal, the story ends abruptly as Charles decides to stop writing).

The sea seems to act as a recurring symbol in the story of the objective nature of morality. Of course, I’m guessing here because Murdoch was a Platonist, but I suspect the back-and-forth between Charles’s story and his description of the sea shows the separate nature of subjectivity and objectivity. Nonetheless, both these things exist within the same plane and therefore constantly intermingle and affect one another (indeed, one of the biggest plot twists in the story involves a tragic death by the sea).