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Chapter 10
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Blueback, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Nature, Belonging, and Conservation
Family and Love
Greed and Environmental Destruction
The Ocean and Life’s Mysteries
Time, Change, and Continuity
Summary
Analysis
Abel goes to university, where he studies the sea and “pretend[s] to be a scientist.” But he still doesn’t discover what fish think. When he returns to Longboat Bay between semesters, he fishes with his mother and makes improvements to their house.
For Abel, who has spent so much of his life underwater, studying the sea from an academic standpoint feels strange—almost to the point of being unreal. Nevertheless, he attends university in the hopes that he’ll be able to untangle some of the ocean’s mysteries. Even now that he’s older, his curiosity about the sea persists.
Themes
Abel falls in love with a girl named Stella, who is from the desert but loves the sea. One summer, Abel brings Stella to Longboat Bay. When Abel arrives, he realizes how much older his mother looks now, and he thinks he’s been away from home for too long. The three of them dive near Robbers Head so Stella can meet Blueback. Abel’s mother jokes that Stella will have to share Abel with Bluback.
As Abel grows older, he experiences more big life changes, including meeting Stella and falling in love. Abel also becomes more aware of the unyielding passage of time as he notices his mother’s aging. Meanwhile, when Abel brings Stella home to meet his mother, he’s also bringing her to meet Longboat Bay itself and his best friend, Blueback. In doing so, he demonstrates that Longboat Bay and the fish Blueback are part of his family, just as much as his mother is.
Themes
Later, during dinner, Stella remarks that Abel and his mother seem to be able to communicate to each other without words. Dora replies, “It’s the fish in us.” That night, Abel proposes to Stella.
Stella has keen insight into Abel’s close relationship with his mother. Because Abel and Dora share a strong, loving bond and have spent so much time together, they don’t need words to understand each other. According to Dora, she and Abel are just like fish in their ability to communicate without speech. She and Abel have lived their whole lives by the sea, interacting with sea life, so perhaps they’ve learned from fish how to connect with each other without using human language. By proposing to Stella, Abel begins to form his own family, which he has always wanted to do.
Themes
