The Living

The ocean is a constant presence in The Living, and in a way it serves as one of the primary antagonists in the book. When Shy witnesses David Williamson’s suicide, he sees David’s body disappear into the ocean as though it never existed at all: “The ocean still whispering, same as before. Like nothing whatsoever has happened, and nothing will” (7). This sight creates a connection in Shy’s mind between the ocean and the fragility and insignificance of human life, and he is haunted from then on by the uncaring vastness of the ocean. The ocean acts as a symbol of Shy’s own mortality and as a stand-in for the universe as a whole; it is not good or bad, it does not care about or even understand Shy’s existence, it simply is. The scale of his life against that of the ocean gives Shy a sense of existential dread, as it forces him to recognize that his death is inevitable. Shy often imagines he can hear the ocean whispering to him, though he never knows what it is saying.