The old woman lived by the sea and no one knew her name. The town of Astoria, Oregon, was small and quiet, but that only made the old woman more mysterious. With a town so enclosed, there wasn’t a move you could make without your neighbor knowing. So this old woman made sure she had no neighbors, and settled in a house at the very tip of a cliff. The dark waves broke onto the cliff splashing upward like clawing arms. The sheer force must have rattled her house with every approach.
The sun never visited the old woman who lived by the sea, and some say that this slowly drove her mad. She only emerged from her weathered home when the rain spit so hard from the sky, that her emergence was invisible. She hid behind the raindrops, letting each one wash her away.
With a copper teapot in hand, she scuffled down the cliff, towards the rushing sea. On a washed up log she sat, alone and hidden, sipping chamomile tea with rose petals. On some days she lingered on the edge of her ceramic tea cups with spearmint and lemongrass or vanilla rooibus with apple slices.
Once the rain subsided, all that would be left on the old weathered log, was her empty, washed out tea cups. It would be the only sign to all the Astorians, that the woman who lived by the sea was still living on.
Semiotic Analysis
This photograph has four signifiers: “log,” “teacup,” “ocean” and “rain.” All of the signifiers have a common signified. Meaning that the internal image that comes to mind when we see or hear these words, is the same concept that everyone else sees. This is also arbitrary due to different cultures ideas of the signifier.
The creative narrative based on this photograph above was written by looking at the elements of the picture, without listing the images, but by defamiliarizing it. Subconsciously I wrote a story using the signified concepts I received mentally when I looked at the four signifiers. I didn’t do this on purpose because I was not familiar with the idea of Saussure’s semiology.
From a semiotic analysis the image of rain can symbolize doom, tragedy, or sorrow. The teacups are in pastel, feminine, and floral colors and patters. They have gold handles and are clean and in perfect condition. This gives the idea of someone from an older generation, most likely a woman. The ocean is blurred in the background and even though it is not the center of the attention of the photograph it still plays on the meaning behind the teacups. When you think of the beach, you don’t think of rain automatically, unless you think of Oregon or Washington. Those two states are the most wet places in America, and both have a coast facing the pacific ocean. So with those keys we piece together a sorrowful, elderly woman, drinking tea, in Oregon, by the ocean. The viewer may also guess that the woman is wealthy, because to live by the sea, especially with an ocean view, would mean someone of higher status and money.
The log gives us a place, where the woman and the teacups meet. It is the center setting of the photograph. The log is of pine or red wood which can be found in a conifer forest. This provides more evidence for the fact that this scene takes place up north. Southern California beaches are more common with palm trees rather than pine. All these elements play together to provide a deeper meaning of the picture to the viewer.
Rivkin, Julie & Michael Ryan. “Introduction: Formalism.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 4-6
Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art as Technique.” Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden: Blackwell, 2004. 14-21.
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