content5= Monk by the Sea is the first of a pair, the other painting being Abbey in the Oakforest, also featured on this site, of paintings created by Caspar David Friedrich in 1809.  A monk is depicted alone on a desolate beach in front of a vast bleak ocean.  Compared to the neverending ocean and large sky the monk is a dot on the oil painting.  This is supposed to represent the insignificance of human existence as opposed to lasting nature.  A question of impending mortality is posed in this painting and the fact that a monk is depicted as a character expressing this emotion is Friedrich attesting to the religious notion of the after life when faced with mortality.  In the second part of this set, the abbey in the oak forest, the monk is implied to be the death that the figures in the procession are mourning.  As the monk is shown seemingly waiting for dawn in the night in the first instillation of this pair of paintings, dawn has arrived in the second half and the monk has died.  Friedrich uses light and darkness to portray this connection.  The painting conveys that death is inevitable and humanity is alone in the process.
<BR>In my story a representation of the monk by the sea is depicted as a tattoo'ed on the main character's arm, depicted in the snap shot on the right, to represent the link between the main character and the girl she met in the club who had the second part of the pair tatoo'ed on her back.