Before Night Falls

The sea acts as the prison walls of Cuba, symbolizing both freedom and confinement. The prisoners at El Morro vie for views of the sea at the small windows in the fortress walls: for them, the ocean offers a tantalizing experience of freedom. The sea also symbolizes escape for Arenas: Before his imprisonment, he gets to experience this escape in his daily swims. Under the sea he finds a beautiful, hidden world reminiscent of the magical world he discovered climbing trees in the jungle of his childhood: “a world of rock and coral, white, golden, and unique. I would come up glistening, smooth, full of vitality, toward that dazzling sun and its immense reflection in the water” (325). Just as in his tree climbs, in his dives Arenas enters a world of natural harmony that calms his inner turmoil. The swims cleanse him of the despair of his everyday life, revitalizing him (382).

Literary and erotic resonance imbue the sea during Arenas and his friends’ beach trips, promising both sensual pleasure and artistic transcendence: “Perhaps subconsciously we loved the sea as a way to escape from the land where we were repressed; perhaps in floating on the waves we escaped our cursed insularity” (333).