Descriptive Writing Alone At Sea

The sea is the abode of extreme paradoxes. Grave silence and roaring tempests, terrible darkness and glitzy colors, lovely reviving life and fearful surrendering deaths, solemnity and boisterousness, good fortunes and misfortunes, an inspiration to write sonnets or elegies – you will find all these around the sea.

“Don’t look down” the wind whispers tenderly as it blows through my golden trusses. Trifling detailed fragments of snow fall from the skies above, meeting the horizon. They are the calmness in this storm. My storm. The jagged icy glaciers, sharp as a knife, smooth as silk, tower overhead. Every breath I take is a battle, every thought is a war and every step is one closer to the end.

We hear only tales of its slow stricken madness. Most often it’s a fisherman, who falsely lulled by the ocean’s gentle rhythm, forgets the ravenous spirits lurking below. He wakes up on a sandy shore and sees he’s alone--his small ship decimated by the shimmering waters he knew for decades.

Captain Styles made the executive decision to dock at the unnamed island someplace in the Gulf of Mexico. From the dark clouds and strong winds they could tell a storm was coming soon. Niall had wandered away from the crew like usual. He ran the warm sand through his fingers and smiled to himself.

I wake up on a Saturday morning to the rays of sun shining as hot as the lava burning fiery below a deadly volcano. I couldn’t believe today was the day, I could feel my nerves tingling like being tickled with a small feather.

The span between the surface of the water and the top of the cliff was three hundred feet high. The profile of sharks could just barely be seen circling in the murky brown water. My toes hung off of the side of the cliff loosening pebbles from their resting place and sending them plummeting to the shark infested cauldron. My swimsuit seeped frigid droplets of water down my legs. When my friends shouted up to me their voices became whispers barely audible as the wind screamed across my ears. I felt as if I was about to collapse from anxiety.

(Approximately 1 year after the eviction of the nobles), swimming in neck-high waters, Bob, gasping for air- was being approached by a floating vessel, with horrifying shrieks of cannibalistic pirates that were ready to slaughter him if they seized him. As the approaching vessel came closer and closer, he was panting harder and harder- he soon heard the shrieks louder and, louder, and with a tone that can only describes being hungry. Bob imagined in his head, the carnivorous pirates swooping him up from the dark blue voidless waters, and devouring him whole. Vulnerable in the voidless waters, Bob felt like he was in solitude,, himself swimming in a body of water bigger than he can imagine- filled with appalling, awful creatures ready to kill him. Bob recalls prior to this incident, something that led him to leave the kingdom something that would change his fate.

Day 1: It's dark and cold. The storm grows stronger. It is howling. It sounds like a groan of agony. What is that sound? It sounds like…Death! I hear its wicked laugh, it’s getting louder! I get up and run but I cannot escape. The screams are piercing my ears ever so slightly to drive me into madness. A jagged pain rushes up my spine, I am losing vision. I am truly at poseidon's mercy now. I awaken. I cannot breathe. My lungs are burning inside me. I reach for the surface I can finally breathe but the joy does not last for long for the waves knock me down yet again. I struggle to get back to the surface. I suddenly see a wave as big as a mountain, barreling towards me. Before I know it, Its upon me. I get washed up onto another piece of metal from the boat.

"The water of the Gulf stretched out before her, gleaming with the million lights of the sun. The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in the abysses of solitude. All along the white beach, up and down, there was no living thing in sight. A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water." Chapter XXXIX

I lurch towards the water’s edge, pitch it high into the air and watch it twist and turn until it splashes into the waves. Far out, where only sea and sky exist, breakers lift their foamy heads, rear up in anger, and rush towards me. I lie down on the sand and close my eyes. Let them take me; let them drag me out into the emptiness, toss me about, spin me around and cast me down.

Once I boarded the boat, the first thing I noticed was the stench. I breathed through my mouth, trembling and gagging, as tears began to stream down my face with a mixture of sadness and agony of what was to come. The men with the pale skin and long hair guided us to the bottom of the boat where the graveyard was; that was where they kept us for most of the boat ride. They then shackled us together by our ankles and wrist. I winced at the cool metal of the chains

My head bobbed in the water, allowing my arms and legs to tread. A smile grew on my face when I saw how calm the water was, up and down and back and forth, moving in a constant wave. Before I could react, my head went under, held down by two large hands wrapped around my neck. I attempted to fight whoever was pushing me farther into the water, but my efforts were futile. My hands latched on to those of my attacker; my hair swirled over my field of vision. I screamed and let the air escape, but water filled my lungs, making it increasingly difficult to breathe. More and more water weighed me down, hundreds and thousands of feet deeper than I could handle. My body gave out; I couldn’t keep fighting. The hands around my neck squeezed tighter and tighter. Breathing was impossible.

I smile as the wind picks up once again, my toes go numb as I walk down my cement walkway towards the sidewalk. I look up once again to be greeted with dark angry clouds clashing against a blue sky. The winds seem to bring the angry clouds with it yet I don’t mind, if anything it brings me happiness. A fire truck's siren slices through the silence like a sharp knife breaking me out of my separate little world.

The “little boat” the men possessed fought against a rough sea: “Occasionally, a great spread of water, like white flames, swarmed into her.” Although one moment the men battled raging waves and splashing water, the sea would calm and “at last there came a wave more gentle than the others.” The vacillating nature of the sea exemplifies the struggle between man and nature. The men never could determine the sea’s next move and what it could cause. The characters understood the unpredictability of Nature; however, not one character was prepared for the deterministic power of Nature. Not only did Nature cause problems while the men waited for help, but Nature decided on the men’s fates. During a physical competition between the men and the waves, the men tried to survive drowning. While cursing several gods, the narrator questions, “Who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?” Questioning his seemingly futile efforts, the man realized his life is in Nature’s hand: “Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.” Without the power to change Nature, the men understood Nature would decide their fate. Fighting against the violent and uncontrollable Nature, the men’s personal agency was eliminated when Nature decided the destructive fate of their voyage and the life of their

“The Seafarer” and "The Wanderer” are both poems that describe the hardships of the average Anglo-Saxon warrior. These stories show that life during the times of the Anglo-Saxons is not pleasant. In fact, it appears to be tough, fearful, and depressing. In “The Seafarer”, a man describes his horrid life on the sea, and in "The Wanderer”, a man tells his tale of being put into exile and losing all his fellow warriors and lord. Both men feel physical and emotional pain while going through their adventure. The seafarer claims that the sea itself is torturing him by saying “...the sea took [him], swept [him] back and forth in sorrow and fear and pain.” (2-3) The seafarer also explains that coldness is much more than just a feeling but a