Sea Story Short Story

Love is very similar to the ocean. It can be ugly, painful and scary but it can also be peaceful, beautiful and wonderful. In A. S. Byatt’s short story “Sea Story” the protagonist experience all of these different feelings.
In “Sea Story”, the story is written in a chronological order, starting from when Harold is born and his upbringing. The story then sets its focus on Harold’s meeting and time with Laura. Then, the story is set off track when it shifts from Harold’s story, to follow the travel of the bottle he pitched in the ocean. The story concludes with how everything turned out for Harold and Laura, which makes it a closed ending because the reader does not have any room to speculate any further.
The narrator is a third person narrator,

This theme is most seen at the end of the story: “The signet ring was heavy enough to plummet down to the ocean floor, where a hagfish lunged at it, swallowed it and choked. A fat eel took the letter with its weeping words, and excreted it […] Some of these were mistaken for small squid by hungry fish and swooping gannets, whose guts were already swollen with waste” (p. 3, l. 18-22).
As mentioned before the focus of the story changes, however, the language stays the same as before. From beginning to end, the language is very descriptive: “The bottle sidled between an ethereal shopping bag and a cracked shoehorn, was sucked down and spat up, its green sides glittering in the sun” (p. 3, l. 12-13).
The bottle’s journey could serve as metaphor for the emotional turmoil that is going inside of Harold, as he anxiously awaits Laura’s return. His emotion could be the raging sea tearing apart the bottle, in his case maybe his heart, until what is left of the bottle finally reach its destination. At the destination there are no more frustration, unrequited love or pain, there are only peace as the remains is swallowed up and gone.
Harold use quotations from poems in order to express the love he feels for Laura. The reason why, is to make the reader understand Harold’s desperation, fascination and fear of losing the one he

2, l. 59-60). In the he do not quote the poem but only think of the words.
When Harold’s affection for Laura takes over, he acts on an impulse and pitch the bottle with the love letter in the sea. Harold decides to use the poet Robert Burns words to express his love: “As fair art thou my bonnie lass,/ So deep in luve am I;/ And I will luve thee still, my dear,/ Till a’ the seas gang dry -/ Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,/ And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;/ I will luve thee still, my dear,/ While the sands of life shall run.” (p. 2-3, l. 80-87).
The role of the nature is used to describe Harold’s emotions. The description of his feelings is focused on his feelings for Laura, but the ocean also soothes him and he found it painful to be away from it when he went to Oxford: “His days in Oxford were the first he had spent away from the sea and its absence was peculiarly painful.” (p. 1, l. 28-29). Harold dedicated his life to the sea and “strode along Filey Beach collecting plastic bags and debris, retired and died” (p. 4, l.