Key themes
- Obsession as self-deception — the story the narrator is telling himself
- Renunciation and its limits — the Buddhist elements that resist the central drama
- Art, power and the man who cannot see himself clearly
About this book
Charles Arrowby, a famous theatre director, retires to a remote cottage by the sea to write his memoirs — and encounters his first love, whom he still believes is imprisoned by a bad marriage. Murdoch's Booker Prize-winning novel is about obsession, self-deception and the stories we tell about our own past.
Published in 1978, The Sea, the Sea won the Booker Prize. Murdoch was also a professional philosopher and novelist, and the tension between Charles's worldly ego and the Buddhist teaching he nominally reveres is one of the novel's central ironies.
Discussion questions
- Charles Arrowby believes he is writing a memoir of retirement and spiritual growth. How does Murdoch develop the gap between what he thinks he is doing and what he is actually doing?
- Hartley — the woman Charles is obsessed with — is presented largely through Charles's perception. How does Murdoch develop her as a separate person against his overwhelming narrative?
- The sea itself is the novel's constant presence — beautiful, indifferent, dangerous. How does Murdoch use this setting — as character, as symbol, or as something that resists interpretation?
- Charles is an extremely unreliable narrator — narcissistic, self-deceiving, occasionally frightening. How does Murdoch make him compelling despite these qualities?
- The Sea, the Sea won the Booker Prize. What does it achieve that earns this recognition — and is Murdoch's characteristic philosophical density a strength or an occasional obstacle?
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