Content Warning: This section includes discussion of death and graphic violence.

The virgin forest is frequently described as an ocean in The Ritual, becoming an important motif in the text that evokes The Clash Between Modernity and Ancient Beliefs. The ocean symbolizes a vast region that is inhospitable to humans. Human-made structures, like tents and houses, are compared to ships on the ocean. The ocean, like the Scandinavian wilderness, is mostly unexplored and unreachable by humans. For example, “Out there, somewhere in the length and breadth of the countless trees and the oceans of invisible ruin and tangle, a great bow or strong limb had been snapped in half” (138, emphasis added). An ocean is a massive amount of space: It is long, wide, and deep. The forest that Luke and his friends travel through is also enormous and beyond their comprehension. They cannot see it all, as much remains invisible and untouched by people.

Humans create structures to exist within the ocean of forest, including tents and houses. Luke describes the tents’ features as ropes used on ships, and torches/flashlights as lights on a ship. While at the old woman’s cabin, Luke describes how “[t]he building listed like a boat in a squall” (390). When Luke is finally in the process of escaping, it feels like the house is not upright on solid ground, but leaning on moving water. Humans, and their creations, are miniscule in comparison to the immense forest and oceans.

When Luke reaches the edge of the forest, he feels like he is escaping from a watery landscape. Beyond the virgin woods, there is “a rocky plane, windswept and misty with rain […] Besides a scattering of small birch trees it was arid, desolate like the bottom of some great ocean that had been drained” (413, emphasis added). In experiencing his emergence from the forest in this way, Luke associates being back in civilization with being freed from the immensity of the forest.