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The story’s titular sandpiper (which, in fact, does not appear in the story at all) symbolizes the narrator’s liminal existence. Like the shorebird that inhabits the shore (the border between land and sea), the narrator finds herself inhabiting the margins both of European and Egyptian cultures and of her own family. The narrator’s existence in Egypt is characterized by an overall lack of purpose and belonging—her “foreignness” is illustrated by the fact that she has a weak grasp of the country’s language and politics, appears unable or unwilling to assume the role the society has assigned to her, and requires protection “from the sun, the mosquitoes, the salads, the drinking water.” At the same time, she is unable to return to her home country (at least right now) due primarily to her devotion to her daughter, Lucy, who, unlike the narrator, was born in this country and does actually belong. Much like the sandpiper (a bird that lives on the edge of the ocean, where the water meets the land), the narrator straddles two contrasting cultural landscapes without fully inhabiting either, and the story illustrates her sense of marginalization.
The shore also embodies this marginalization. As the border between two distinct landscapes, it is the ultimate illustration of a liminal space: neither fully land nor fully sea, the shore is instead characterized by the interactions between the two, and the narrator spends a lot of time observing and describing this back-and-forth. In one sense, then, the shore represents the sense of incompatibility at the heart of the narrator’s lack of belonging. Though there is a perpetual give-and-take, the truth remains that, like the sand and water beyond this small stretch of beach, she and her husband actually know only very little of one another, and the narrator makes this clear at the end of the story. In this regard, the narrator’s liminal existence is due to a feeling of being trapped in the in-between—she is simultaneously unable to assimilate to her husband’s culture and to return to her home country.
The Sandpiper and the Shore Quotes in Sandpiper
The Sandpiper quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Sandpiper and the Shore. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Sandpiper Quotes
I used to sit where the water rolled in, rolled in, its frilled white edge nibbling at the sand, withdrawing to leave great damp half-moons of a darker, more brownish beige. I would sit inside one of those curves, at the very midpoint, fitting my body to its contour, and wait. The sea unceasingly shifts and stirs and sends out fingers, paws, tongues to probe the shore. Each wave coming in is different.
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I looked out to sea and, now I realize, I was trying to work out my coordinates. I thought a lot about the water and the sand as I sat there watching them meet and flirt and touch. I tried to understand that I was on the edge, the very edge of Africa; that the vastness ahead was nothing compared to what lay behind me. But even though I’d been there and seen for myself its never-ending dusty green interior, its mountains, the big sky, my mind could not grasp a world that was not present to my senses.
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That narrow stretch of sand knows nothing in the world better than it does the white waves that whip it, caress it, collapse onto it, vanish into it. The white foam knows nothing better than those sands that wait for it, rise to it, and suck it in. But what do the waves know of the massed hot, still sands of the desert just twenty—no, ten feet beyond the scalloped edge? And what does the beach know of the depths, the cold, the currents just there, there—do you see it? —where the water turns a deeper blue.
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The Sandpiper and the Shore Symbol Timeline in Sandpiper
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Sandpiper and the Shore appears in Sandpiper. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Sandpiper
...describes a low white wall outside that borders a white stone path leading to the shore. Years ago, from her window, she would notice designs in sand blown onto this path....
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These days, when the narrator looks at the shore—“the edge” of Africa, of the continent where she lives, where she almost died, and where...
(full context)
