Human literature and folklore is full of the romance of the sea. All those heroic deeds, brave confrontations with the elements, battles with fierce creatures, and always some strange symbolism regarding our unconscious state, or our subconscious state. I can never sort those out. If you are unconscious, that means you’ve been beaned on the head, right? Or taking a nap, to be less slapstick about it. The subconscious lurks beneath our conscious state, by definition; it informs our thoughts and motives and decisions and actions, whether we like it or not. So the theory goes, at any rate. Literature assigns our fears and desires monstrous manifestations in the forms of kraken and mermaids and Atlantis and angry squid that leap from the coast to attack cities of the North American Midwest. The hero emerges from the deep, dark underworld (or underwater) wholly changed by the experience. This can be pretty cool, or really tragic.

What does any of that have to do with our little pig? We’ll see.