Somewhere Beyond the Sea

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 4

Chapters 5-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapter 13-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

“Don’t You Wish You Were Here?”

The motif of the repeated question “Don’t you wish you were here?” (65, 95, 387) supports Klune’s thematic examination of The Importance of Living Authentically. This question appears on Linus’s mousepad from his old DICOMY office. When Larmina gives the mousepad to Linus in the elevator, Linus tells Arthur that looking at the beach scene that accompanies the slogan was “one of the few things […] that made DICOMY bearable” (66). Imagining a place like the one depicted on the mousepad was a mental escape from his grim and joyless life in the city—and now that he’s back in the city, he longs for the scene’s real-world equivalent, Marsyas Island. The words “Don’t you wish you were here?” are established in this scene as a refrain that, throughout the story, questions why people put up with the misery of conformity and inauthenticity when they could be experiencing the “sunshine” of living authentically with joy. When Arthur loses control at the hearing and transforms into his phoenix form, Linus tosses the mousepad at his head. In a literal sense, this tactic gets Arthur’s attention, recalling him to himself and reminding him of his real goals—goals reinforced by the mousepad’s symbolic question. The text’s final mention of this question comes in the Epilogue, when Doreen Blodwell writes Linus a note promising that she will work toward positive changes as the new head of DICOMY. It will take time, she tells him, but a better—and more authentic—future lies ahead for magical people. She closes the note with the words, “Don’t you wish you were here?” (387).

Fire

In Somewhere Beyond the Sea, fire serves as a symbol of passion and The Transformative Power of Love. Several characters in the warm and loving Baker-Parnassus family are associated with fire—Sal writes a poem that metaphorically identifies him with fire, Theodore can breathe fire, and Arthur is a phoenix, able to both produce fire and transform himself into an enormous, flaming bird. Lucy explains that, when he first encountered Arthur on Marsyas Island, he “saw something magical. Two suns. One in the sky and one on the beach” (358), indicating that with his special abilities Lucy was able to see Arthur’s true fiery nature even in his human form. The importance of this fire symbolism to Arthur’s characterization is also evident at the hearings early in the novel, when Linus shows his support for Arthur by wearing a tie that is “a lovely shade of reddish orange, the color of fire” (58). Arthur recognizes this choice as symbolic, “a burst of flame in the muted gray of this rain-drenched city” (58).

When Arthur returns to Marsyas, in the story’s prologue, he feels “the fire burning within him […] brighter than it had [been] in years” (1). Klune associates fire with Arthur’s willingness to put his own pain aside in order to enact change for the magical community—positioning his return to Marsyas as an act of deep love that also demonstrates his need for transformation and justice. Arthur finds his fire more and more difficult to control as events put more pressure on his emotions. This trend culminates when, after he learns that Rowder is plotting to take Lucy, he erupts into phoenix form and flies into the sky; his fire burns so hot that it actually consumes him. As Arthur confronts his own emotions for the first time and begins to learn to manage them more effectively, he finds his phoenix form easier to control and he fears this part of himself less, pointing to The Importance of Living Authentically. Even when pushed to an extreme by Rowder’s attempt to take the children in Chapter 15, he keeps the phoenix firmly in check. In the story’s epilogue, Arthur himself explicitly makes a connection between his fire and his passions when, on his wedding day, Zoe asks him what the boy he once was would think if he could see Arthur today. Arthur answers, “That love and fire are one and the same” (393).

Rain and Drabness Versus Sunshine and Color

When Arthur and Linus think of Marsyas Island, they think of its vibrant colors and constant sunshine. By contrast, the city is a dark place drained of color where rain constantly falls. At Linus’s old house in the city, the trees look unfamiliar to Arthur, who is used to the vivid colors of Marsyas: “[T]he leaves [are] dull, dark, as if all the color [has] been sapped from them” (50). No lights are visible in the houses nearby, and Arthur is puzzled that people would not “want to come home to brightness rather than shadows” (50). Even inside Bandycross, the chambers are dark and grim, “as if the absence of color that engulfed the city had leached its way into these hallowed halls, leaving behind only the dreary brown-black of coffee dregs at the bottom of a mug” (70). The consistent portrayal of the city as a dismal place symbolically conveys the absence of the kind of exuberant joy found on Marsyas. Marsyas is where Linus and Arthur feel at home and feel as if they can truly be themselves. It is a place they associate with the chaotic happiness of their family life and with their truest friendships, with people like Zoe and Helen. The vivid colors of nature and the warmth of constant sunshine suggest that Marsyas offers a kind of health and happiness not to be found in the confines of the city where people are expected to conform to social norms. The symbolic contrast between these two settings supports the novel’s theme of Queer Joy as a Form of Resistance.