The Sea

The centrality of time, loss, and memory is created by the constantly shifting time frame of the narrative, which moves fluidly between Max’s childhood, his relationship with Anna, her final illness, and his current life at the Cedars.

In a novel that centers on loss—the deaths of the Graces and Anna and the literal loss of time as it passes—memory seems to offer a consolation for the relentless march of time. Memory suggests that Max preserve those he has lost and keep them with him. With reference to Connie Grace, for example, Max observes, “She is in my memory her own avatar” (118). However, “avatar” indicates how memory can diverge from the truth. Memory is unreliable, and the relationship between what is remembered and what has been lost is often far from clear. With regard to Connie, Max goes on to remark that other “avatars” of Connie may exist in other memories, but they will not necessarily have anything in common with what he preserves:

No doubt for others elsewhere she persists, a moving figure in the waxworks of memory, but their version will be different from mine, and from each other’s. Thus in the minds of the many does one ramify and disperse (118-19).