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Chapter 11
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 and his wife Stella begin their careers as marine biologists. Although they study and travel all over the world as experts, Abel feels like he’s still just a young, curious boy trying to understand how the ocean works. One day, Abel realizes with a shock that he’s now older than his father was when he died.
Abel has come far since the story’s beginning, when he was just a 10-year-old boy. Now, he’s an adult, a husband, and a world-famous marine biologist. Abel himself marvels at how much time has passed with a mixture of surprise and sadness. Despite how much his life has changed, however, Abel’s fundamental curiosity about the sea has stayed with him. Even though he has grown up, he retains a sense of youthful wonder.
Themes
Abel discovers a diving magazine with a picture of Blueback on its front cover. Abel’s mother writes to him that she’s worried about Longboat Bay because so many divers and spearfishers have been coming in. A month later, Abel watches on TV as an oil tanker causes an oil spill near Longboat Bay. When he calls his mother, she cries and says the spill is a warning.
Blueback’s new fame unfortunately puts the blue groper and Longboat Bay at greater risk of being harmed or exploited by greedy people. It’s more and more difficult for Dora to protect her home by herself now. Also, the oil spill near Longboat Bay exemplifies the worldwide problem of pollution that causes environmental destruction and highlights humans’ carelessness toward nature.
Themes
As Abel works far away from home, visiting polluted underwater places, he thinks about Longboat Bay. Blueback regularly appears in his dreams.
Abel’s work of studying how pollution impacts marine ecosystems is important to understanding how to better protect the world’s oceans. However, Abel’s work also keeps him homesick. He misses Longboat Bay and constantly feels drawn to the place where he feels he truly belongs. Abel’s dreams suggests that he also dearly misses Blueback’s companionship.
Themes
