The Sea and Coastline in Lucy by the Sea: A Symbol of Solace and Constancy

What the Sea and Coastline Literally Are in the Novel

In Lucy by the Sea, the Maine coastline is not just a setting; it is a constant, breathing presence that shapes Lucy's experience of the pandemic. When William drives Lucy out of New York City in early March 2020, he takes her to a rented house in Crosby, Maine, arranged by Bob Burgess. The house sits high on a cliff at the end of a point, with a glassed-in porch above the water. From the porch and the living room windows, Lucy can see open ocean, rocks, and two small islands with evergreen trees. The coastline is rocky rather than sandy: dark gray and brown rocks, spiky evergreens growing on ledges, and seaweed in a brown-gold, almost copper color. The sea is not the calm, warm water Lucy knew from Montauk or Grand Cayman; it is cold, gray, and, as she puts it, bitingly salty.

The sea recurs throughout the novel as a steady presence. Lucy walks a narrow road past a cove full of lobster boats, sits on a bench watching the boats and buoys, and learns to read the tides. She watches sunsets from the porch, walks out on the rocks at low tide, and hears the ocean through her skylight at night. Even when she is not looking at the water, it is there—splashing on the rocks, slapping against the cliff, matching the gray of the sky. This constancy is precisely what makes the sea a symbol of solace in a world where nothing else feels stable.

First Impressions: A Foreign Shore

Lucy's first encounter with the Maine coast is deeply ambivalent. Driving down the narrow road toward the house, she is amazed by what she sees: the dark green water curling over the rocks, the lobster boats in the cove, the huge expanse of water and sky. She thinks, This is the sea! It was like a foreign country to me. The foreignness is both thrilling and unsettling. Lucy says she likes places that are familiar, and foreign places frighten her. The ocean is beautiful, but it is not her ocean. The smell is bitingly salty, and she does not really like it. The house itself—weather-worn, damp, with strange furniture and patchwork quilts—depresses her.

This initial discomfort matters because it sets up the transformation the sea undergoes in Lucy's imagination. The coast begins as an alien landscape she has been forced into by the pandemic, and it gradually becomes something she depends on. The shift is not immediate or dramatic; it happens through daily walks, through watching the tides, through the quiet repetition of the sea's rhythms. By the time she reflects on her time in Maine, the sea has become a source of comfort she did not expect to find.

The Tides as Comfort

By the middle of the novel, Lucy's relationship to the sea has changed. She says she got to know the tides—when they went out and came back in—and that they comforted her. She watches the swirling water as the tide comes in, lapping against the rocks and the two islands, and she watches it go out, leaving wet rocks and coppery seaweed. The constancy of the tides, their reliable coming and going, becomes a form of solace in a world where nothing else feels reliable. The pandemic has no predictable rhythm; the news is full of death; her daughters are scattered. But the tide goes out and comes back in, day after day.

Lucy makes the connection between the sea and her own emotional state explicit: The sadness that rose and fell in me was like the tides. The metaphor is not decorative; it reflects the actual structure of her experience in Maine. Her grief over David's death, which she says is harder in the second year of widowhood than the first, comes in waves. Some days she can work; other days she cannot concentrate and takes afternoon naps, waking disoriented. The sea gives her a way to understand this rhythm as natural rather than pathological.

The comfort of the sea is also physical. During a panic attack about returning to her New York apartment—where David will never again come through the door—Lucy goes outside and watches the tide coming in, the water lazily slapping at the rocks below her. The image of the water moving without urgency calms her. The sea does not solve her problems, but it holds them.

The Islands as Anchors of Memory

The two islands visible from the house carry particular weight for Lucy. On her first day, she feels a sweetness at the sight of them, and they remind her of a single tree in a field near her childhood home in Amgash, Illinois, which she had always thought of as her friend. The connection is significant: the islands become a kind of companion in the present, just as the tree was in the past. They are always there, steady and unchanging, in a way that almost nothing else in Lucy's life is.

The islands also connect the sea to Lucy's larger concerns about memory and identity. Her childhood was, as she puts it, a lockdown—she never saw anyone or went anywhere. The sea in Maine offers her something her childhood did not: an open horizon. She notes that when she looks straight ahead, there is nothing on the horizon past the two small islands, that is how far out the ocean went. The openness is both freeing and frightening for someone whose life has been shaped by confinement.

Sunsets and Shared Moments

The sea is also the backdrop for some of the novel's most tender moments between Lucy and William. After a rainy day, the clouds break and Lucy sees a sunset so brilliant she cannot believe it: the most golden orange glory in the world. She calls William, and they stand together watching, then pull up chairs. They begin watching for these sunsets as time goes by. The shared watching is a form of connection that neither of them can quite articulate, but it matters. In a novel full of isolation and distance, the sunsets over the water are moments of genuine togetherness.

Another such moment comes in mid-April, when the sun comes out and Lucy and William walk out on the rocks at low tide. They sit in the sun on the porch of a closed store, and Lucy says simply, we were happy. The happiness is unremarkable—two people sitting in the sun by the water—but that is precisely the point. The sea provides a setting in which ordinary happiness is still possible during an extraordinary time.

The sea also absorbs Lucy's anger. After a humiliating incident at the grocery store, when a woman yells at her and William fails to defend her, Lucy leaves the house in the dark and walks down by the water, swearing out loud. The sea is a place where she can be alone with her feelings, where no one is watching.

The Sea Against the City

The sea in Maine is defined in part by contrast with New York City. In the city, Lucy's apartment holds David's cello, which now disturbs her; the streets are empty; her friends are getting sick and dying. In Maine, she can walk freely on a narrow road without seeing many people. She reflects that William was right to bring her up here, where she could walk freely even if she didn't see many people. The sea represents a kind of freedom that the city cannot offer during the pandemic—not freedom from grief, but freedom from the immediate terror of the virus.

At the same time, the sea is not an escape. Lucy feels split between Maine and her New York apartment, and the apartment now unsettles her. The sea does not erase her grief or her fear; it gives them a different shape. The tide goes out and comes back in, and so does her sadness. This connection between the natural world and collective trauma is central to the novel's exploration of how people endure what cannot be controlled.

Study Questions

1. How does Lucy's initial response to the Maine coast differ from her later relationship with it, and what causes the change?

Initially, Lucy finds the sea foreign and unlovely—bitingly salty, gray, and cold. She is amazed by its beauty but does not feel at home in it. Over time, through daily walks and watching the tides, she comes to find the ocean a huge comfort. The change is gradual and is driven by the sea's constancy: the tides go out and come back in, the two islands are always there, and this reliability becomes a source of solace in a world where nothing else feels stable.

2. What does the tide metaphor reveal about Lucy's experience of grief?

Lucy says her sadness rose and fell like the tides. The metaphor suggests that her grief is not a single, constant state but a rhythm—it comes in waves, recedes, and returns. The second year of widowhood feels harder than the first, and the sea gives her a way to understand this ebb and flow as natural. The tide does not stop, and neither does her sadness, but both are survivable.

3. How do the two islands function as a symbol within the larger symbol of the sea?

The islands are a specific, stable feature within the larger, shifting sea. They remind Lucy of the tree she considered her friend in her childhood field in Amgash, Illinois. They are always there, unchanging, and they connect the present moment in Maine to her past. They represent the possibility of attachment and continuity in a time of disruption, and they ground Lucy's sense of identity when everything else feels uncertain.

4. What role does the sea play in Lucy's relationship with William?

The sea provides a setting for some of their most connected moments: watching the orange sunsets together, sitting on the rocks at low tide, being happy in a simple way. It also absorbs Lucy's anger at William—she walks down by the water, swearing out loud, when he fails to listen to her. The sea is both a shared space and a private one, and it allows their relationship to exist in a different register than it does inside the house. For more on this dynamic, see the character analysis of Lucy and William.