Significance of Water

Water takes on an ambiguous and religious connotation in the novel signifying symbolic cleansing much like baptism rituals in Christianity. One is cleansed of sin and reborn. In the novel, however, water is portrayed paradoxically, because it is the water where the Essex serpent resides; this takes a symbol of purity and turns into a dark mass of unknown elements. The term Blackwater also denotes something unseen, because if the water is black or murky that means one cannot see what is in it or underneath it.