Her får du hjælp til at analysere novellen “That Same Sea” (2018) af Adrian Markle. Novellen har været anvendt til den skriftlige eksamen i Engelsk B på HF den 2. december 2020. Ud over hjælp til analyse giver vi dig også et summary af novellen samt hjælp til fortolkning og diskussion.
Symbols
The sheep is a symbol of the woman’s lack of connection with her past. It is the catalyst which makes the woman realize that she is not as much a local as she thought. When faced with the problem of the hurt sheep, both the man and the woman show that they are outsiders, unable to cope with a hands-on crisis like this one.
The sea (also present in the title) is a symbol of the woman’s past. The woman is familiar with the sea and its surroundings. For instance, she knows the tide comes in suddenly (l. 7), and how to make her way to the grotto (ll. 73-74). However, the woman has also become estranged from her past during the time she has been away, and she no longer feels fully connected to it. The sea may have remained the same, but she has changed.
The man carrying the sheep to safety through the rising tide can be interpreted symbolically as an initiation. In this way, he gains a little knowledge about what village life is like. The process is not easy: “it was a lot harder to walk in to the shore than it had been to walk out” (ll. 110-111), and the man feels connected to the hurting animal (ll. 106-109). All this signals his change in perspective.
The change in the man’s perspective is also seen when comparing the beginning and ending of the short story. The man looking “south, to the sea, and sometimes back east, towards home” (l. 2) at the beginning is a symbol of him being anchored in the life of a city dweller, and uninterested in the village life. He simply longs for home, the city. However, at the end, his change of perspective is symbolically shown ...
