Water and sky imagery appear throughout the story, and both are images that often accompany definitions of the sublime. Both the ocean and the sky strike humans as limitless, which can represent both possibility and emptiness. Annie keeps Ben in a pan filled with saltwater, she eventually takes him back to the ocean, and Ben’s struggles with humanity lead him to contemplate the sky, which Annie finds she cannot do in the same way. Ultimately, the reoccurrence of water and sky set these two characters up against vast backgrounds that challenge their ability to think.

At the same time, Bender uses small details to make connections between the sublimity of water and sky and the unexceptional quality of everyday life. When Annie cries into Ben’s pan, she refers to the pan-water as “a sea of me” (Paragraph 2); Ben’s eyes are blue and unwavering (Paragraph 8); the sheets that Annie gets up from to go out to look at the sky are pale blue (Paragraph 10); Annie imagines that the baking pan makes its way on the ocean waves to someone who needs it (Paragraph 20). These details bring the sublime experience of loss closer to the everyday-world and illustrate how the profundity of the sublime can arise in the most mundane places.