Reviews - The Sea, The Sea

654 reviews for:

The Sea, The Sea

Iris Murdoch, Mary Kinzie

3.94 AVERAGE

groadie's review against another edition

4.0

reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Very, very rambling but if you stick with it there's some really nice passages. The protagonist is wonderfully unreliable and there are some quite amusing bits. Honestly, it's kind of all over the place — it's a sort of medidative diary interrupted by a frantic, obsessive romance, but the cast of characters is interesting and the writing is clever. Perhaps there was some big overarching statement to the book which I've missed, but to me it was just like a snapshot into the mind of a strange, pompous but oddly human narrator.

crystal_reading's review against another edition

3.0

Slightly bizarre, but captivating.

oldpappy50's review against another edition

5.0

emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

narpetcards's review against another edition

3.75

dark lighthearted slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

burritapal_1's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book is about the bizarre obsession that a self-absorbed, self-satisfied, narcissistic, retired play director has for his childhood sweetheart. They grew up together, and were the perfect soulmates, telling each other that they would marry and live happily ever after, when they turned 18.

But as in real life, the characters in this book change, or rather the character of Hartley changed, and when they turned 18, she told Charles that she no longer wanted to marry him. Charles just could not accept this, and kept pestering her, asking her over and over again, why? She finally had to run away and hide from him, because he just would not leave her alone.

Charles spent his theater career being a Mujeriego, ruining relationships and marriages, as he used his position and power to possess women and then throw them away like pieces of trash. However he has a huge, most satisfied fantasy-world image of himself in his mind, and thinks he's really something. He believes that he knows how to cook so well, as he makes his nasty-sounding meals, in his little house by the Sea that's cluttered and dirty and messy. He never takes a bath, instead goes swimming in the sea. Ugh. Have you ever gone swimming in the ocean? You get covered with salt and slimy stuff like seaweed.

Anyways, shortly after he moves to the Sea where there's a little village nearby, he runs into the old version of his young girlfriend Hartley. She's fat, she's wrinkled, she's a mousy little thing with a timid demeanor. She's been dominated by her pushy, aggressive, bully of a husband who is an ex-military. Yet Charles sees in her the beautiful face of his young friend Hartley, and cannot let this obsession go. He's determined to break her up from her husband and take her away and "be happy." He totally convinces himself that, though he's been a puto all his life, he will be absolutely faithful to her.

Charles did LSD in his youth. One time! And soon after he moves to The Sea, The Sea, he sees a monster rising from the waves.

"... out of a perfectly calm empty sea, at a distance of perhaps a quarter of a mile (or less) I saw an immense creature break the surface and Arch itself upward. At first it looked like a black snake, then a long thickening body with a ridgy spiny back followed the elongated neck. There was something which might have been a flipper or perhaps a fin. I could not see the whole of the creature, but the remainder of its body, or perhaps a long tail, Disturbed the foaming water round the base of what had now risen from the sea to a height of (as it seemed) 20 or 30 ft. The creature then coiled itself so that the long neck Circled twice, bringing the now conspicuous head low down above the surface of the sea. I could see the sky through the coils. I could also see the head with remarkable clarity, a kind of crested snake's head, green-eyed, the mouth opening to show teeth and a pink interior. The head and neck glistened with a blue sheen. Then in a moment the whole thing collapsed, the coils fell, the undulating back still broke the water, and then there was nothing but a great foaming swirling pool where the creature had vanished."

Charles, after thinking about it for a while, figures that this must be a flashback to the time he took LSD. I don't know about you, but I took LSD probably a hundred times in my youth, and I have never once had a flashback. I can only attribute the author inventing this episode to James, Charles cousin, who is in some sort of elite military group, perhaps a bit like the CIA in this country, and he has been keeping an eye on Charles. He decided to just fuck with his head a little bit. Quién sabe?

The character of Charles is a total puto, using women, taking women away from their husbands, using them until he's tired of them, and then throwing them away. He fools himself that he would have been different with Hartley. Oh yes, charles. Asshole.

"... Hartley destroyed my innocence, she and the demon of jealousy. She made me faithless. But with her I would have been faithful, with her my whole life would have been different, less ruthless, less empty. Do I then think my life has been empty, my life? A ridiculous judgment! Could Hartley really have thought the youth that I then was 'a worldly man'? If so she was more like my mother than I ever suspected. She made me a worldly Man by rejecting me, that failure ruined me morally.... "

Lawd I love the way that Murdoch draws this character of a man. And she was supposedly so into sex. I guess this was how she learned so much about putos, like her character Charles.

Charles's old girlfriend Rosina tracks him down and he confides in her that he wants to get with Hartley. Charles had broken up his friend Peri's marriage with Rosina, and then had used her and dumped her. Nevertheless, she wants to get back with him, but he's having none of it. He's totally obsessed with getting back with Hartley, totally, absolutely convinced that she really wants him. The character of Rosina sums him up very well:

" 'Charles, be human. She's timid, she's shy, she must feel terribly inadequate and mousy and dull, after her life, meeting you after your life. She probably feels ashamed of her dull husband, and feels protective about him, and resentful against you. Use your imagination! And she'd bore you, darling, and she knows it. She's an old age pensioner, she wants to rest now, she wants to put her feet up and watch television, not to have disturbances and adventures. And then supposing you did carry her off and then felt bored, whatever would you do, with yourself or with her? You're used to witty, unconventional women and you're an old Bachelor now anyway, you couldn't really stand living with anybody, unless it was a clever old friend like me. You couldn't start a new woman, and that's what she really is for all your touching memories of jaunts on bikes. I think you just want to break up her marriage, like you just wanted to break up mine. I'm pretty tough, but as it is you gave me a lot of misery over a long time, and I'm not going to let you off, you're going to have to pay for my tears, like people in the sagas pay. You've lived in a hedonistic dream all your life, and you've got away with behaving like a cad because you always picked on women who could look after themselves. And my God you told us the score, you never committed yourself, you never said you loved us even when you did! A cold fish with clean hands! But it was just luck really if the girls survived. You're like a man firing a machine gun into a supermarket who happens not to become a murderer. No, no, but it's different here, you must respect the poor old thing's choice, her life, her son, her nice little new house. Leave her alone, Charles. No wonder she runs a mile when she sees you!' "

Charles schemes to verify for himself how Hartley's husband treats her. He creeps close to the house, at night time, and crouches under an open window at their house. He hears her sniveling to her husband, and him berating her, gaslighting her, manipulating her, and her telling him over and over, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!' So Charles has verified for himself how heartless and cruel the husband treats her. When he kidnaps Hartley and locks her up in his room, he Springs this Shameless eavesdropping on her, in order to verify to her that he knows how her husband treats her. Her reaction is beyond bizarre:

"sitting bolt upright against the wall she was now crying as I have never seen any woman cry(and I have seen many [yes, we know, asshole]. Tears seemed to shoot out of her eyes in torrents, then her wet mouth opened in a sort of strangled shout, an animal Cry of tortured pain. Then she gave a low shuddering wail, and fell over sideways, grasping at her neck, pulling at the dressing gown as if she were suffocating. The wail was followed by a shuddering gasp, and in a moment she was in hysterics. I jumped up and watched her, appalled. Well then did I understand what Titus had said about it: it is frightening and it is meant to be. I felt that the whole most violent assault was being made on my spirit, on my sanity. I had witnessed hysterical screaming before, but nothing like this. I knelt again and tried to hold her, to shake her, but she seemed suddenly so strong and I so weak, and also to touch her had become terrible. She was shuddering rigidly with a dreadful damaging electricity. Her face was red, wild with tears, her mouth dribbling. Her voice raucous, piercing, shrieked out, like a terrified angry person shrieking an obscenity, a frenzied Panic noise, a prolonged 'aaah,' which turned into a sobbing wail of quick 'oh - oh - oh,' with a long descending 'oooooh' sound ending almost softly, and then the scream again: this continuing mechanically, automatically, on and on and on as if the human creature were possessed by an alien demonic machine. I felt horror, fear, a sort of disgusted shame, shame for myself, shame for her. I did not want Titus and Gilbert to hear this ghastly rhythmical noise, this attack of aggressive mourning. I hoped they were far away on the Rocks singing their songs. I shouted 'stop, stop, stop!' I felt I should go violently mad if it went on for another minute, I felt I wanted to silence her even if it meant killing her, I shook her again and yelled at her, ran to the door, ran back again. I shall never forget the awful image of that face, that mask, and the Relentless cruel rhythmical quality of that sound." 🤣

Despite the character of Charles constantly putting down his cousin James, and only remembering bad things about their youth and their past, James is a definitely caring character. Despite him being deeply involved in his military secret to career, James comes down to where Charles is living come and tries to save him from his madness. He sums up his way of looking at Hartley most succinctly:

" 'so having tried, can you not now set your mind at rest? Don't torment yourself anymore with this business. All right, you had to try, but now it's over and I'm sure you've done her no lasting harm. Think of other things now. There's a crime in the Army called deliberately making oneself unfit for duty. Don't do that. Think about titus.'

'Why keep dragging Titus in?'

'Sorry. But seriously, look at it this way. Your love for this girl, when she was a girl, was put by shock into a state of suspended animation. Now the shock of meeting her again has led you to reenact all your old feelings for her. It's a mental charade, a necessary one perhaps, it has its own necessity, but not like what you think. Of course you can't get over it at once. But in a few weeks or a few months you'll have run through it all, looked at it all again and felt it all again and got rid of it. It's not an eternal thing, nothing human is eternal. For us, eternity is an illusion. It's like in a fairy tale. When the clock strikes 12 it will all crumble to pieces and vanish. And you'll find you are free of her, free of her forever, and you can let the poor ghost go. What will remain will be ordinary obligations and ordinary interests. And you'll feel relief, you'll feel free. At present you're just obsessed, hypnotized.' "

"His inability to recognise the egotism and selfishness of his own romantic ideals is at the heart of the novel."--Wikipedia

This author is just phenomenal in the way she draws these characters, most of them from Charles Theater past. The characters I like the most in this book were his cousin James and lizzie. Lizzy is a actress who absolutely loved Charles and the most pure way. But of course he just used and abused her period James is a very enlightened character, having gone to live in Tibet and learn to speak the language. He's studied Buddhism and knows many of the ways of buddhism.