A Place Where the Sea Remembers

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1993

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-12

Chapters 13-14

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Tradition Versus Modernity

Like many small towns and communities, Santiago is torn between its cultural roots and the encroaching progress of the modern world, be it technological or ideological. The balance is a delicate one, and the residents struggle on a daily basis to negotiate that balance. Esperanza the midwife delivers babies in the home, the way women have delivered babies for millennia, but if a problem arises that is beyond her abilities, she is not averse to sending the woman to a modern hospital. While Candelario and Chayo Marroquin both have their superstitions—his is the color blue, she believes in curses—they nonetheless are tied to the 20th century economically. They rely on tourism and the service industry, both modern economic models, to survive. And both of these industries are rooted in the economic philosophy of capitalism, which often epitomizes social Darwinism at its most merciless. People’s livelihoods are dependent on the capricious whims of others who have no investment in the welfare of those people. In a small community where everyone knows everyone else, and where the residents’ lives intersect almost daily, the dog-eat-dog ethos of survival is a stark counterpoint to the benevolence of shared responsibility.

The onslaught of progress is relentless, and it may be useless to resist it, but Remedios does. She is the sole link to Santiago’s cultural history, its ancient rituals and practices. She exists in a realm of spirit guides and folk tales, but her power is no myth. In the world of the novel, her prophecies come true; her magic produces tangible results. In the character of Remedios lies the appeal of tradition and ritual. And the common thread among cultures is astonishing. Civilizations across time and space have shared similar stories, similar archetypes, and similar mythologies. And perhaps this is why Remedios is still such a powerful figure even in these modern times. She represents our collective unconscious, a shared set of beliefs that we as human beings all understand on a subconscious level, whether we know it or not. And that kind of understanding is beyond the reach of modern technology.

Life and Death

The themes of life and death play out in a variety of ways in the novel. Babies are born, and people die. It is the way of nature. Humanity is tied to it whether we like it or not. Remedios understands this cycle on a practical and a spiritual level. When she waits on the beach for bodies to wash up, it is not only the physical corpse she awaits but the story of that person’s life. When someone dies, the community loses not only a father or a mother or a child, it also loses their story. Death eradicates the body and the story if those stories are lost to memory. Remedios is a vessel for the stories of lost lives and for the fears and grief of living ones. The burden is great, and her spirit must walk in the stars to be reborn. And yet listening, accepting the burden of listening, is her duty as a healer. Listening to a story is healing because telling a story is letting go of a terrible burden. As the text describes, “In her hut, Remedios listens to someone’s story, and the teller is revived” (103).

Life and death is a moral issue as well, and Benitez gives that moral discussion a space. The visiting abortion doctor and don Gustavo, the owner of the restaurant in which Candelario works, have a robust debate about the morality of the doctor’s work. The doctor sees the practical side—a necessary option when the mother’s life is at risk—but don Gustavo sees the moral and legal side. When the doctor cites rape as a legitimate reason to terminate a pregnancy, don Gustavo replies, “Both the law and the Church would quarrel with you on that” (15). As a giver of life and an abortion provider, the doctor represents both life and death in a single character.

Life and death cycle in and out of the narrative without warning. Chayo becomes pregnant unexpectedly after thinking she could not bear children. Richard dies because he is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the ground gives way beneath him. New life is often a cause for celebration, but not always. For Chayo and Candelario, who must bear the gossip of the community, pregnancy is a blessing. For 16-year-old Marta, who dreams of freedom, pregnancy is a curse. And while death brings grief, the ramifications are varied. Undoubtedly, the death of Marta’s young son Richard is a tragedy almost too painful to bear (ironic, given that four years earlier Marta wanted to terminate the pregnancy). Even the death of Rita, Justo Flores’s prized canary, is terrible given the context. But when doña Lina eventually dies, her passing would likely be met with a mixture of grief and relief by her son Rafael. Death is an intrinsic part of life, and both are bound to the inevitable cycles of nature. It is fitting that the sea, a vast, elemental force, should deliver the dead to Remedios as a reminder that life is fragile and nature can end any story at a moment’s notice.

Preserving the Memories of Others

While death claims every life eventually, those lives persist in memory. The very title, A Place Where the Sea Remembers, suggests a direct link between memory and nature, a link personified in the character of Remedios. As she waits at the water’s edge not only for a body but for a life story, it is the sea that captures and transmits that story. And it is through those stories that the community keeps its members metaphorically alive. Remedios “has passed story back through her heart, where nothing dies away because it is remembered” (142).

Sometimes memory takes on a physical manifestation. César Burgos builds a shrine to his wife and sons who were killed in a bus accident. Memory alone, it seems, is not enough. Mental images that drift in and out of memory are elusive, and César cannot rely on that alone. The shrine he builds is a physical testament to the memory of his lost family and a receptacle for his grief. It acts as a totem, a ritual object comprised not only of wood and glass but of other memories. When his son Beto decorates the shrine, he uses seashells that he’s collected over the years, small mementos of his own memory. They are, in a sense, putting their own memories into this physical structure to keep them permanent. Memories are notoriously tenuous, but wood and glass, elements of the earth itself, are more permanent.