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Chapter 12
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
While work keeps Abel and Stella away from Longboat Bay, Dora Jackson observes disturbing changes at home. The weather grows unstable, and more sea creatures die mysteriously. Meanwhile, Dora has difficulty maintaining the house and land by herself. In winter, a terrible storm comes that riles the sea, destroys fences and sheds, and shakes the house.
Time brings more change to Longboat Bay. Abel’s absence and the effects of aging present new challenges for Dora, demonstrating how time can bring unwanted and adverse change. The worst changes in Longboat Bay—the storms and deaths of sea creatures—seem to be consequences of climate change. Thus, the novel depicts on a small scale some of the dangers of climate change, a global problem aggravated by humans’ apathy toward the environment.
Themes
The next morning after the storm, Dora discovers thousands of whale bones exposed on the beach, as though “history” has “unearth[ed] itself.” When Dora walks among the bones, she feels like she’s walking through a graveyard. She thinks about how the Jacksons used to hunt whales and how she and Abel have been living off the sea. Dora understands she must help and protect the sea now.
The whale bones symbolize Abel’s family history. More than that, the bones being uncovered after all this time signifies that the past deeds of Abel’s ancestors—including whale hunting—are not lost to a distant past but instead continue to have consequences in the present. Being reminded of how much the Jackson family has taken from the sea over the generations inspires Dora to give back to the sea now. The whale bones encourage Dora to do whatever she can to protect sea life in return for everything the sea has given her family.
Themes
At once, Dora starts writing letters to politicians, businesspeople, and scientists across the country. Most people ignore her, but she stubbornly persists for months. Eventually, Dora triumphs. Abel and Stella receive a message that Longboat Bay is now a protected marine park.
Motivated by love for her home and respect for the sea, Dora fights to protect Longboat Bay in the small way she can. The success of her passionate advocacy illustrates that even a single person can make their voice heard and create positive change. By ensuring Longboat Bay becomes a marine park, Dora gives back to the sea in a major way. Through Dora’s actions, the novel showcases the importance of environmental activism and nature conservation.
Themes
Abel and Stella fly back to Longboat Bay. On the plane, Abel dreams that his mother is dead, and she sinks into the depths of the sea with Blueback following her. When he wakes up, Abel cries. He tells Stella that despite how hard he’s tried all his life to understand the sea, his mother is the one who has really understood it all along. She knows the bay because she is part of it and has never left it. Abel adds that he’s always longed to know “the language of the sea.” Stella suggests he might not “need words.”
Abel’s dream further links the ocean with death by framing the sea’s dark depths as the mysterious place where people go when they die. In his dream, Abel can’t follow his mother into the sea any more than he can know what comes after death. However, Abel imagines that Blueback, a fish, can follow the dead to their resting place, just as he can swim into the sea’s depths. In this way, Abel’s dream reinforces the idea that fish might know the mysteries of life and death as well as the mysteries of the ocean. Abel’s waking conversation with Stella implies that—for living humans—some of the sea’s elusive secrets can only be learned by living in harmony with nature, as Dora has done.
Themes
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