ABSTRACT
Prospero’s inclination to be a manipulator and a selfish avenger is never far from the action of the play, and as a representative of the fascinating but complex Renaissance idea of the magus, his position is more subtle and dangerous than the ignorant Charles can recognize. Charles’s cousin, James Arrowby, is a student of the dangerous road, and unlike the naive and largely unconscious Charles, he is acutely aware of its nature and dangers as well as of its task in seeking goodness and evoking the whole of the spiritual life. The Unicom has received a great deal of critical attention, but remains a mysterious and puzzling book. The extreme contrast in structure makes the spiritual quests of the two novels appear very different, inasmuch as the aspect of formal tale in The Unicom places Hannah Crean-Smith at the centre, whereas James Arrowby, the Buddhist questerin The Sea, The Sea, only gradually emerges from the egotistic tangle of his cousin Charles’s first-person narrative.
