Down to a Sunless Sea analysis

The story written in March 22nd 2013 by Neil Gaiman is somehow about the river called The Thames, which flows through southern England, more specifically through the capital, London, which is where the short story takes place. The perspective of this story is narrated by the writer, so the reader does not get to know everything but are limited. This story deals most with a woman without any given name that has lost her son and husband to the big sea. We find her to walk at the Rotherhithe docks, which she has done for decades, but nobody cares about her, yet she still starts to talk every time someone passes by, but she does not talk to the person, she talks to the rain which flows into the Thames River. “And then she sees you. She sees you and she begins to talk, not to you, oh no, but to the grey water….”(P.2, 13-14) This gives the reader an idea of her being a little crazy, because she talks to the rain and the river, which in any way cannot respond.
She had a son who wanted to be a sailor, just like his dad. The woman does not like it, because she had already lost the father because of the sea. He went and never came back, so the mom does not want the son to go, but he does, and he does not come back either. She seems to be a loving mother, but has gone crazy because of her loses, yet her stories are very interesting for the protagonist, and he/she keeps listening to the story even though it is raining.
".. and you do not know what to reply, or how to reply. You would have to shout to make yourself heard over the roar of the rain, but she talks, and you listen. You discover yourself craning and straining to catch her words.” (P.2, 15-16) The narrator can not resist listening to the, what seems like, exciting stories the woman is telling.
She does not want a fancy house, so she does not seem to be a materialist, but she have cheated on her husband. The son is not the husband’s son, but another sailor’s. She had an lover. The husband may have left her because he figured she had cheated on him.
The son of the mother seems to be an adventurer, but also a very responsible boy.
“..Oh Mother, I need to see the world. I need to see the sun rise in the tropics, and watch the Northern Lights dance in the Arctic sky, and most of all I need to make my fortune..”(P.2, 18-19) He wants to see the world, but most of all he wants to make a fortune, so he can build his mom a house, so it seems like they do not have a home, or at least a lousy one, which brings me to the setting of the story.

The overall setting of this story seems to be filthy. London seems to be dirty at this time. We get the feeling of a dirty city, and the make it even worse is the Thames River described as an even filthier element, where bodies of cats and dogs and bones of sheep and pigs flows down the river. And the story mainly deals with this place, because this is where the woman is most of the time. One could think she lives there, but we are never really told.
“it only needs to touch London to become dirt, to stir dust and make it mud.”(P.1, 7)

Water plays a big part of this story. It rains, the sea has taken her family, and she may live near, if not at, the docks.
The sea is not just a sea. It is a sea of grief. The woman is in grief, and she has lost the only things she had to the sea. The sea has chewed her family. The sea is another world, a underworld. People who travel, live or work on the sea may be aware of they might die there.

The narrator’s role gives the reader a deeper connection with the story. The narrator tells how ‘you’ feel, and it feels like the narrator tries to tell you how you should feel, and it works very well. It makes the reader think about the story in a slightly different way compared to other stories. It makes you think of things you maybe would not have thought of. Like when the narrator wants to toss the bone from her dead son into the river. This bone may be a symbol for love. The love between the woman and the sailor Jack, which she cheated with, may still be there, because a bone lasts for a while. It could also be a symbol of him still giving her ‘the bone’ every now and then. The bone could be a symbol for the survival instinct or greediness. If needed, the human being is able to do such incapable and horrible things we would not ever dream about and that may be why the narrator wants to throw it into the river and just forget about the horrible stories. The narrator may even want to be a sailor himself and is being scared by the story she tells, and wants to throw the only evidence away and make some distance.