The vast expanse of the sea and marine life are motifs in art, literature, film, and other mediums of human expression, from the terrorizing violence of sharks in Jaws to the glacial emptiness of the Arctic in Frankenstein. Among works where the sea is centerfold is The Lathe of Heaven, a novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. In The Lathe of Heaven, jellyfish serve as a symbol of effortless action, sea turtles turn from a representation of antagonism to coexistence, and the sea that the two species inhabit represents the constantly changing universe, emphasizing the novel's endorsement of Daoism as a philosophy for living. Jellyfish react to the turbulence of the sea by subtly drifting, just as people in Daoist philosophy should react to obstacles …show more content…
The two species eventually live in harmony after the resolution of the brief conflict of the aliens landing on Earth, with Orr even collaborating with an Alderbaranian store owner. While jellyfish and sea turtles initially appear at odds, both are needed in sea ecosystems. Without jellyfish, sea turtles would starve. Without sea turtles, jellyfish would overpopulate the ocean and consume excessive nutrients, resulting in the mass death of jellyfish and other marine organisms. Humans are defined by their intelligence and Le Guin writes that Alderbaranians are "natural entrepreneurs." Both species are good at different tasks, and if the two groups coexist, prosperity follows. By the end of the novel, Orr lives a content life and has a close friend in an Alderbaranian named Enbe Enbe, signifying the collaboration between jellyfish and sea turtles. Through the symbol of sea turtles, Le Guin highlights that coexistence, a central tenet of Daoism, is a vital virtue to embrace. Both jellyfish and sea turtles inhabit the ocean, like how humans and other living organisms occupy the same
...and strength to break away from society. Personification is used to describe the sea. "The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation" (Chopin 50-51). The sea also plays metaphorical roles in the story standing as chaos and danger. This comes in to play when Edna goes into the sea and it takes her life.
The sea, or green-world token is present throughout the novel as Edna engages in her innermost thoughts and her relationship with Robert, the green-world lover. Although ...
“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.
“The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in
The Diver, the reader is immediately thrown into the unknown. A few lines into the poem, the reader can start to understand that we are underwater. The repetition of sound causes different feelings of uncertainty and fear as the reader delves deeper into the poem. “Moss of bryozoans/blurred, obscured/metal.”
In the forth stanza the poet uses hyperboles like “castles and every hole an abyss,” to create vivid visual imagery emphasising the peril of the turtles situation.
"The water of the Gulf stretched out before her, gleaming with the million lights of the sun. The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in the abysses of solitude. All along the white beach, up and down, there was no living thing in sight. A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water." Chapter XXXIX
“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.”
The paradisiacal kingdom under the sea is symbolic of childhood. At the onset of the story, the sea kingdom is described: “where the waters are as blue as the petals of the cornflower and as clear as glass, there, where no anchor can reach the bottom,” and where “[one] would have to pile many church towers on top of each other” in order to reach the surface (Andersen 217). The sea describes the deep consciousness of the Little Mermaid as a young child, which is characterized by emotion, beauty, imagination, purity and innocence - representative successively of the water, flowers, the imaginative sim...
There are several symbols in the story that help to emphasize that point. One powerful one is the boat. It is small and alone on the ocean, with only the occasional patch of seaweed or a seagull or two to keep it company. The waves themselves are the ups and downs of life. At any moment, a ‘wave’ can come and swamp you, leaving you stranded without a clue what to do, and more just keep coming. Just as in life, “…after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats.” Line 9.
-Ellen G Friedman, Breaking the Master Narrative: Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, in Breaking the Sequence: Women’s Experimental Fiction. Princeton University Press, 1989,
The Seafarer highlites the transience of wordly joys which are so little important and the fact thet we have no power in comparison to God.
“Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” Literature and Its Times. 2. Joyce Moss and George Wilson, eds. Detroit, MI: Gale Publishing Group, 1997. Print.
The unknown authors portray the two themes through detail and emotion. "The Seafarer" creates a storyline of a man who is "lost" at sea. There is a major reference to the concept of the sea and how it "captures" the soul and leaves a lonely feeling. The character is set to know the consequences of the sea, but something keeps calling him back to it. "And yet my heart wanders away, My soul roams with sea, the whales' home, wandering to the widest corners of the world, returning ravenous with desire, Flying solitary, screaming, exciting me to the ocean, breaking oaths on the curve of a wave." (lines 58-64). This poem also grasps the concept of religion and how it plays a role in this work.
... foreign and mysterious. The people of that time period didn’t really know what to expect. They sought the sea as a counter-purposive nature - a wild, sublime nature which its audience could imagine as being so very unlike the familiar and domesticated nature of pastoral England. They simply didn’t know enough about it and had the worst fears about it. Their fears proved somehow true and real in the incident shown in the painting. The view we should follow in the 21st century is that of the depiction in the Old Man and the Sea. We need to learn how to deal with the sea; how to live with it, cherish it and protect it because the sea is a gift, a gift of wonder. We can’t do without it. We need it. We need to learn how to protect it and leave the humans’ selfish ways out of it. The old man fished and left behind some for the future; we need to do the same.