Down to a Sunless Sea by Neil Gaiman
Down to a Sunless Sea by Neil Gaiman
Down to a Sunless Sea is short story written by Neil Gaiman and published in the British newspaper The Guardian on March 22nd 2013. Taking place in London, this story describes a rainy encounter on the banks of the Thames which unlocks a tale of loss and grief.
The setting is London. Presumeably 18th or early 19th century based on how the Thames is described as extremely filthy and filled with the bodies of cats and dogs. Also the mention of the so-called mudlarks: people who scavenge in river mud for items of value. This term is especially used to describe those who scavenged this way in London during the late 18th and 19th centuries.
So, on the docks of Rotherhithe a woman encounters you. She tells you the story of how her son left her to go explore the seas on a ship. The ship he gets on is hit by a storm and he is left on a rescue boat with eight men. As the inevitable hunger sets in, the men eat the boy and toss his remains in the sea. The ship’s mate, Jack – a former lover of the boy’s mother – manages to get a single bone from the boy, a bone which he brings to the mother when they finally reach land. The woman then informs Jack that the boy was in fact his own son. After hearing this, the ship mate fills his pockets with stones and walks into the sea, and thus killing himself.
Most important for the short story is of course the woman, as she is the one doing the monologue and telling her story. Having lost her son, her husband and her lover to the sea, the woman is heart-broken. She does not care about the rain or anything else for that matter. She walks the docks, staring at the sea that has taken everything she loved. There is no description of how the woman looks. All we get is the sensation that she is completely and utterly broken and has nothing to live for.
The author of the story also manages to merge you, the reader, into the story by making you the person the woman is telling her story to. This
Down to a Sunless Sea is short story written by Neil Gaiman and published in the British newspaper The Guardian on March 22nd 2013. Taking place in London, this story describes a rainy encounter on the banks of the Thames which unlocks a tale of loss and grief.
The setting is London. Presumeably 18th or early 19th century based on how the Thames is described as extremely filthy and filled with the bodies of cats and dogs. Also the mention of the so-called mudlarks: people who scavenge in river mud for items of value. This term is especially used to describe those who scavenged this way in London during the late 18th and 19th centuries.
So, on the docks of Rotherhithe a woman encounters you. She tells you the story of how her son left her to go explore the seas on a ship. The ship he gets on is hit by a storm and he is left on a rescue boat with eight men. As the inevitable hunger sets in, the men eat the boy and toss his remains in the sea. The ship’s mate, Jack – a former lover of the boy’s mother – manages to get a single bone from the boy, a bone which he brings to the mother when they finally reach land. The woman then informs Jack that the boy was in fact his own son. After hearing this, the ship mate fills his pockets with stones and walks into the sea, and thus killing himself.
Most important for the short story is of course the woman, as she is the one doing the monologue and telling her story. Having lost her son, her husband and her lover to the sea, the woman is heart-broken. She does not care about the rain or anything else for that matter. She walks the docks, staring at the sea that has taken everything she loved. There is no description of how the woman looks. All we get is the sensation that she is completely and utterly broken and has nothing to live for.
The author of the story also manages to merge you, the reader, into the story by making you the person the woman is telling her story to. This