THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA tells of a band of savage thirteen-year-old boys who reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, & sentimental, & train themselves in a brutal callousness they call 'ojectivity'. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he & his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft & romantic. They regard their disappointment in him as an act of betrayal on his part & react violently.