Study Guide 

to

John Barth's "Night-Sea Journey"

(1) Can you see how the first paragraph indicates that this story is a dramatic monologue?

(2.a) How many distinct "theories of our journey" can you identify as having been raised in the course of the story?  

In paragraphs 13, 14, and 15, a whole host of these theories are introduced, as speculations of the speaker's lost companion on the journey, and friend.  

Try to enumerate these, with notes in the margin.

(2.b.) Which theory of the journey turns out to be the correct one?  

(See how this is the question we've been prompted to pose?  But note how arriving at an adequate answer requires us to abandon an assumption at work in the discussions between the narrator and his friend.  What is this plausible, but false, assumption?  [Hint:  we've been led to approach the problem as one of picking one theory among several "alternatives."  What turns out to be surprising, though?)

(2.c.) In what sense does the narrator end up addressing "himself," at the conclusion of the story?  That is:  who does "you" turn out to be, and how are this "you" and the narrator ("I") related to each other within the overall situation (according to the "correct" theory of what the journey "is")?  Put another way:  which "places" do the narrator and the addressee occupy within this overall situation?

(2.d.) What exactly is the narrator's "secret hope" that he discloses reveals at the end?

Why does he harbor this hope?  That is:  what is the motivation that lies behind it?  (What rationale does he give for adopting this attitude?)

(2.e.) Are you -- i.e., the particular reader that happens to be the individual person you are -- inclined to grant the narrator's final wish?

Why or why not?  That is:  could you give a persuasive explanation for the stance you adopt towards this hope?

• Note in trying to come up with an answer to this question, we are in effect deciding "to what degree we identify with" (or are willing to identify with) the protagonist.  
• Another way of putting it would be to say that we are deciding on what "degree of distance" to adopt, ultimately, between ourselves and the protagonist.
• Note that what is at stake here is simultaneously a picture we adopt of the character whose judgments we are assessing but a decision (provisional, of course) about who we are (or who we want to think we are).  That is:  we have to arrive at some reflective conception about "where we stand" on the issues we take the story to be designed to raise, and about why we would be led to take this stance.  The story thus offers to function within our own project (supposing we are committed to one) of developing our "self-knowledge."

(3) How would you describe the transformation the narrator undergoes towards the end of the story?  

What is the transformation that you understand must have happened after the story ends?

What further transformations might be open to the being that this latter (implied) transformation will results in (or has resulted in)?

Don't read further in this study guide until you've given yourself some opportunity to think through the story in the light of the above questions after you've read the story at least once.  Then (only), during  a subsequent reading of the story, 

try out your thoughts as to how the predicament of the swimmers, and the particular destiny of the swimmer who is the narrator, invites being taken as a religious parable -- an allegory about what might be "the meaning of life."

(1) First, try to notice, as you read, what details, and what turns of phrase, seem to prompt us to explore implications along these lines.

[Hints:  

• What does "swimming" stand for?  (For example, what does the French phrase joie de nager mean?  It is meant to remind us of the phrase joie de vivre -- "the joy of life."  (What does that phrase suggest, in turn?)  
  • This kind of playing off of some reference beyond the immediate context is known as allusion.  
  • What other allusions do you recognize at work in some of the language of the narrator and his companions?  (Devise an abbreviation to use for ticking these off in the margin of your text of the story.)
    • How does recognition of them enrich both the humor and the thematic texture of the story?)
• What items in the setting hint at the idea of "goal" or "purpose" -- and hence "meaning of" (in a prominent sense of the term "meaning of X")?
  • What does the narrator evidently conclude in respect to the notion of "the meaning of the night-sea journey"?
  • Are there importantly distinct ways of conceiving "the meaning of" something -- i.e., beyond some kind of pre-imposed function, purpose or goal?

(2) Simultaneously, in the course of the same reading, try to take up this invitation, and carry out some exploring along those lines.

• In how many ways are the situations of what-the-speaker-is and what-"you"-are parallel?
• How are their identities similar?
• In how many ways are the situations of these two orders or kinds of being importantly different?
  • In what does the importance of these differences consist?
• How are their identities (natures) different?
  • How, if at all, do any of these differences count as "fundamental," for the purpose of characterizing the human situation?
• What are some of the important ways in which the narrator's ultimate understanding of what is going on "in life" ("ours" in its connection to his) different from one or more of the following? 
  • one or another Christian conception of "the meaning of life"
  • one or another Muslim conception of "the meaning of life"
  • one or another Jewish conception of the meaning of life"
  • Note how, if we are familiar with it, we could ask the same about "the Homeric hero's" (Achilles', or Odysseus') conception of "what we're here for", or about one or another Hindu, or Buddhist, or ancient Aztec, or contemporary Navaho, etc., conceptions.  Is there anything in the story that suggests that it is designed to invite us to consider one of these families of perspectives in particular?

  Suggestions are welcome.  Please send your comments to lyman@ksu.edu .

   Contents copyright © 2003 by Lyman A. Baker. 

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  This page last updated 18 September 2003.