« Goodbye, My Brother »

Father drowned : more feminine death → drowning of masculinity. Only the mother and 4 children remain, and the daughter is divorced : they both are freed from male figures.

The narrator is nameless, and “Chaddy” only has a nickname. Only Diana and Lawrence are introduced by their Christian name.

The title is a hint that separation is going to happen.

The landscape gives a religious overtone. The sea used to be the subject of mystical conversations between the narrator and Chaddy. The sea is used for revelation, it refers to a play by Shakespeare “The tempest” : “Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade. But doth suffer a sea-change. Into something rich and strage.”

At the very end of the story, two very contradictions of the sea are opposed : “iridescent and dark” / “Venus Anadyomene”.

Nature repeatedly seems to confirm the apocalyptic view that the narrator credits his brother with.

The attempt of murder fails, he keeps on insisting on Lawrence's view which takes the foreground of the story. Lawrence's misanthropic and gloomy view dyed the world with his own color.
This cynicism is described as a kill-joy.

Lawrence's attitude towards life is linked to a religious tendency called contendus mundi.

To Lawrence, it's a shame that the house which is not that old looks so vulnerable.

Lawrence is kneeling on the beach as if he was a denier of the faith that he wants to embrace, a faith in the world.

Vanity is found after the mention of the carnival illusion.

The fact that Lawrence is disliked poses the problem of normality : because we are subjective beings, maybe the real reality is contextual, not absolute. Maybe absolute truth is wrong.

Objective Correlative by TS Eliott : Sometimes a object in the outside world is used to externalize an emotion. Here, Lawrence becomes an objective correlative of his own pessimism.

To what extent is our reading of the character depending on