This collision in the Placid Gulf, the central event of the novel, is a metaphor for the impact of all subjective dream-ideals upon each other with consequences of real destruction. To the physical unlikelihood of this crash, which could be accounted a flaw in the plot, one may counter that on the metaphoric level it must happen: that when blind, driven, subjective forces are loosed in the world they inevitably intersect at the point of mutual desire, and that all human tragedy reduces in the end to two boats in the darkness, trying to remain unseen and at the same time make all possible speed, colliding without any clear idea of what is occurring and inadvertently destroying each other's goal.