In romantic relationships, it’s often the case that the person who wants the least has the most power. This is true of the relationship between Ishmael and Hatsue, though this is not something Ishmael yet understands. He’s lost in yearning, caught up in a sort of angst-ridden bliss, at once content to simply be with Hatsue, filling up his senses with the sights and sounds of her body, and yet not content at all, sensing that there is more to her than he realizes and yearning to know all of her. Using the images of clam digging and the mingling of ocean waters, Guterson expresses both Ishmael’s quest to dig for something delectable below the surface and his mystical longing for something vast and unlimited. Unfortunately, Hatsue feels about things quite differently than Ishmael does, and this passage offers a series of contrast between them.