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Chapter 4
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
When he’s 13 years old, Abel has to leave home to attend high school in a bigger inland town, where he’ll stay in a hostel during the school semesters. On the last day before he leaves home, he wants to swim with Blueback, but stormy weather prevents him. Gloomily, Abel looks out over Longboat Bay. This place is his whole life, and he doesn’t want to leave. Abel goes to the peppermint tree and places a piece of white coral on the shrine to his father. Abel embraces the tree, pressing his face against the bark.
Growing older means that Abel has to face new changes in his life. Starting high school is a difficult, unpleasant change for Abel because it means being separated from his home and the sea, which he loves. For the first time, he’ll also be apart from his family, which includes not only his mother but also his best friend Blueback and the memory of his father. When Abel visits the peppermint tree before he leaves home, he’s symbolically visiting his father, because the tree represents his father’s enduring presence in Longboat Bay. By hugging the peppermint tree, Abel symbolically embraces and says goodbye to his father.
Themes
As his mother drives Abel to his new school, Abel thinks being away from Longboat Bay, the only place he belongs, will cause him to “wither up and die.” Throughout the school year, Abel studies hard, meets new people, and makes friends, but he constantly misses home. Life feels too crowded and fast in this big, flat inland town.
Abel feels a strong sense of belonging to Longboat Bay. In fact, he feels like his life force is tied to his home, as if he couldn’t survive or be truly happy anywhere else. Abel’s feelings show how important living in nature and being close to the ocean are to him. Of course, Abel does well at school, so his worry about withering up is exaggerated, but the sorrow he feels at being separated from the land and sea to which he belongs is real.
Themes
Abel frequently dreams about Blueback. In one dream, Abel swims with Blueback down into the depths of the sea, where he sees drowned people. At the bottom, he finds his father, who looks like he’s sleeping peacefully. Abel tries to bring him back up to the surface, but Blueback pulls Abel away. When Abel wakes up, he cries, knowing that he’s alone.
Abel is lonely at school. His dream illustrates how much he misses Blueback and his father. Although he has no memories of his father, Abel still longs to know and be close to him. Abel’s dream also presents the ocean as holding the mysteries of the dead. In Abel’s imagination, the dead reside in the dark depths of the ocean. In real life, Abel can’t swim to those depths, just as he can’t reach his deceased father or bring him back to life. In both Abel’s dreams and real life, however, Blueback can swim deeper than Abel can, suggesting that Blueback—as a fish—might know more secrets of the sea and of the dead than Abel ever will.
Themes
While Abel is at school, his mother sends him letters and objects from Longboat Bay, such as pieces of coral and shells. Abel holds the shells up to his ear as if he can hear the sea in them. He tries to imagine the ocean and forget that he’s away from home.
Homesick, Abel relishes any connection he has to Longboat Bay. Thinking of the sea comforts him when he feels alone, showing that Abel’s love for nature strengthens him, brings him happiness, and helps lessen his loneliness.
Themes
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