One very interesting essay idea for this novel might be a symbolic analysis of the ocean, since Dawes often finds himself on the water for one reason or another. Look at the final image of the novel; Dawes and Sylvia are intertwined, floating dead on the water. This shows him and his soulmate, so to speak, tied up in death, and here again, the water that defines Dawes's life and struggle is now holding him up for the reader's consideration, as if the ocean were the force of fate that drove the story. Perhaps it is Poseidon who is to blame for this fateful life.
Dawes is misunderstood by everyone—even himself, so the fateful shape of his life does two things: It gives Dawes a desperate experience of life, full of drama, suffering, and therefore also glory and meaning, and it also exposes the humanity of Dawes to the reader. The father who abandons Dawes is an image for Dawes's misunderstanding, and when the false-father hates Dawes and disinherits him, that is an ultimate symbol. Imagine finding out your father isn't your real father, and that he hates you, and you're doomed to poverty, all in one scene, after watching your mother being physically abused. This is a vivid indication that Dawes's fate in life is to suffer, to bear witness to the injustice and cruelty of human experience.
This symbolic family brokenness is like the broken bottle in the christening of a ship; it launches Dawes into the ocean, literally. The ocean is the domain for people who don't have a solid identity, whose family is not a home for them, for those whose story is lodged in chaos instead of order. On the ship, chaos reigns. The mutiny of the crew is a rejection of order. When Dawes is imprisoned for crimes outside of his control, he is subjected to the chaos of powerlessness. His family afflicts him there too. When he dies with Sylvia in the ocean, that is the ultimate picture of his doom. He was taken by chaos, and the true life sentence that lasts For the Term of His Natural Life is his chaotic fate.
