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.