The Littoral Zone

The Littoral Zone

There is no single definition of a littoral zone, but after one reads “The Littoral Zone” by Andrea Barrett, one can conclude that it means the space between tides where things struggle to survive. In this story, we feel a numerous amount of feelings, from love and passion to loss and hurt. Barrett portrays the excitement of passion and the pitfalls of an unforeseen demise as a result of that passion. Every story has a beginning and an end, but it is the confusion of where the real beginning and end of Jonathan and Ruby’s story lies within the story that serves to highlight just how much they’ve lost and how easily they lost it. The setting itself builds that of a story bigger than Jonathan and Ruby. Barrett’s “The Littoral Zone” centers on the struggles we may encounter for a moment of passion with a lifetime of guilt.

Barrett begins her story fifteen years after the characters begin theirs, at the end of what the reader is shown. The story then starts to shift, coming and going between the “then” and “now.” It ends at the beginning of their relationship. The characters’ lives are divided into “three different stages” much like the story; before they met, during the subsequent failure of their marriages, and the years they have spent together since then. When the story ends, not with the characters proclaiming undying love for each other but at the absolute beginning of the end of their previous happiness with Ruby putting the library to order and sweeping up the remains of a glass that broke in their passion, Barrett shows just how easily they let that happiness go.

By far the most influential moment in the story would be the moment that Jonathan and Ruby step off the boat to not only see their own families but the family of their secret lover’s as well. The jealousy and frustration that amounts in the short descriptive paragraphs allows the reader to truly absorb and feel the disgust both had for the other family. They both seemed to...