It boils the depths like a pot: say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay It makes the sea like a jar of ointment. Work (ch. XLI, v. 31) Dombey and Son: Wholesaling, Retailing and for Export by Charles Dickens is a novel largely about movement and change. A good starting point for the analysis is the continuous reference to the ocean that recurs at key points in the narrative. The death of the first Mrs Dombey is described as "adrift in the dark and unknown sea that surrounds all the world" (Oxford University Press, 1987 p. 10). This description implies the unbridledness of change and death, which money cannot control, and initiates the recurring associations that the Dombey children express with the sea. For young Paul Dombey, the frail son and heir to the Dombey and Son business, the sea whispers endlessly (and presciently, it turns out in his case) of death and the afterlife. The fact that "sea air" is prescribed to aid little Paul Dombey's ailing health is ironic since from the beginning of the novel the reader is led to associate the sea with death and unpredictability. Little Paul, who some consider "old fashioned", seems to feel a strong affinity with the ocean. Having come to know the seashore early, he engages in trying to understand its meaning or purpose, as he believes that the rolling waves "always say something. Always the same thing." (109) Perhaps Paul's extreme precociousness and his connection to things that others cannot understand are a testament to his being, in some sense, too good to live (at least for the purposes of this novel). His close connection with the ocean indicates that in his weak childhood condition he never strayed far enough from the place of death, creation and uncertainty (that place where children believe their mother went) to start a life stable, normal and modern. life with the people of the world more realistic. The description of Paul's fatal fall into illness uses the metaphor of a journey down a rushing river "taking him away" (224). A river is another strong symbol of movement, change, inevitability, and a strange (not necessarily bad) lack of control. The golden light “flows” (note the continuation of the water image) onto Paul as he utters his last words: “How fast the river runs, between its green banks and rushes, Floy! But it is very close to the sea. I hear the waves! they always said!" (225) He describes how “the motion of the boat on the current made him rest” (225) until “the boat was in the sea, but gliding gently.” (225) Paul's descriptions of his aquatic journey to death are in fact quite positive, and he is almost ecstatic. His good and loving nature is imprinted on an otherwise dark event. Eventually, he claims to see "a shore before him", with a person standing on a shore, who Paul calls his mother, as he says she is like "Floy" and knows her "by face". The sea is not only the great force that returns little Paolo to his dead mother; she is also his last nurse who lulls him into eternal sleep. Paul's apparent ability to see into the afterlife during his final moments connects him even more to the ideal of a heavenly child. Florence, partly thanks to her close bond with Paul, is also a heavenly child but for complicated reasons is not recognized as such by her father, Mr Dombey. The name "Florence" (and especially the nickname Paul gave her, "Floy") employs glittering yet subtle puns in its phonetic resemblance to the word "flow" or "flowing" – another deeply rooted allusion to the power and mystery of water..