Breath: Pages 118-161 Summary & Analysis

Bruce continues to grow restless at home in the long gaps between surfing expeditions. Everything and everyone around him come to seem “pointless and puny,” and his parents begin to worry about him. He goes on the school camping trip to an old fort island in the Angelus harbor. Here, the crumbling colonial structures prompt him to meditate on history and the brevity of an individual life.

One afternoon, Queenie finds him brooding in an old mortuary. Their interactions are awkward at first, but they soon warm up to each other as Bruce teases Queenie for her belief in ghosts. They spend the night together in a sleeping bag, but they don’t make it past kissing before Queenie falls asleep, leaving Bruce to toss and turn in frustration on the cold ground.

The next day, Bruce and Queenie are found out and sent home, and Bruce turns out to have pneumonia, landing him in the hospital. He dreams of drowning. In his fever, a woman come by the side of his hospital bed and speaks to him, but he’s too delirious to tell who she is.

By that summertime, Loonie has quit school. His father Karl forces him to go work in the mill. With Loonie occupied and Eva out of town, Bruce has Sando all to himself, and he goes to his house almost daily over his vacation. The two begin to talk about things other than surfing; Bruce mentions the books he’s been reading, and Sando enthusiastically gifts him one of his own. They grow more affectionate towards one another.

One day, while Sando is cooking an exotic meal with spices unfamiliar to Bruce, Bruce asks him about a photo in the house of a ski jumper upside down in the air. Sando responds that that’s Eva: she was a well-known freestyle skier before an injury a few years back. Bruce is amazed. Eva’s pill consumption and sour mood suddenly make sense. Bruce asks why she prefers to live near the sea now, and Sando responds with certainty that if Bruce couldn’t surf, he wouldn’t want to live anywhere near the sea. Bruce is confused why Sando will display Eva’s feats but won’t put up photos of his own famous exploits from former years.

Loonie is promptly fired from his job at the mill, and he starts appearing again at Sando’s on an old dirt bike, bringing an end to the exclusive relationship with Sando that Bruce had developed. Without warning, Sando and Loonie depart on a surfing trip to Indonesia. This baffles Bruce, who had come to believe that he and Sando shared an intellectual bond that Loonie could not partake of.

Bruce habitually feeds Sando’s dog while he’s away, but one day he arrives to find Eva returned from her knee surgery in the United States. She curses him out angrily and he runs off. He returns a week later, and Eva apologizes and insists on inviting him in. She tells him the operation failed, hence her bad mood. She was equally uninformed about Sando’s abrupt trip and resents being left alone while recovering from surgery. She tells Bruce that she’d appreciate some fresh fish if he spears any, but Bruce has no plans to return.

Bruce passes his days in bitter resentment: his friends have taken off to Indonesia without him, and Queenie has started dating the captain of the football team. He goes to the river and tries the old breath-holding fake drowning stunt, but no one seems to care.

One day, Bruce goes spearfishing with the older Angelus boys and kills more than he can bring home, so he reluctantly takes some to Eva. She’s oddly pleased to see him and tells him about how Karl came by, furious about his son’s long absence. She then grows bitter again about her inability to ski anymore and condescends to Bruce, reminding him of why he dislikes her.

A week or so later, Bruce returns to the house intending to give Eva a piece of his mind. He walks in while she’s furiously exercising her leg, moments before she’s overcome with pain. Upon stabilizing, she again insists that Bruce stay and cook dinner. She tells him about Americans’ different ways: they are ambitious in a way Australians wouldn’t understand. When she falls asleep in her hammock, Bruce gets a good look at her unguarded for the first time, and he’s compelled to go touch her damaged knee. She rouses when he gets close, and he flees.

Loonie returns from Indonesia and enthusiastically tells Bruce of his wild adventures with monkeys and shamans and unbelievable surfing. He bestows some hash on Bruce, which he says he tried in Indonesia. After Loonie and Sando’s return, Bruce feels a difference in their relationships. Suddenly he’s on the outside of something the other two share. He begins to understand how other surfers like the Angelus boys must view their whole crew. Eva starts to grow antagonistic to Sando and openly ignoring of Loonie.

A giant storm arrives unseasonably early, and Sando immediately begins planning the crew’s trip to the Nautilus. The storm is frighteningly powerful, making Bruce even more disinclined to surf the Nautilus. Nevertheless, he finds himself skipping school to join Sando and Loonie for the outing. They make a harrowing approach in the dinghy, and Bruce gets close enough to see how treacherous the break really is. Sando catches a wave and gets tossed. He emerges stunned but thrilled, but Bruce will not give into his pressure to follow suit: he’s confident that it’s a bad idea.

Loonie, however, brashly goes for a wave, and he gets thrown and massively thrashed and held down. Bruce and Sando dive to rescue him, but he has already popped up safe, and soon he is laughing. After this day, Bruce is distraught by a sense of failure for not attempting a ride, even though it was the sane thing to do. He fears he is ordinary, and he suspects that Loonie and Sando look down on him as chicken.

Bruce reflects on the slipping confidence he experienced after the Nautilus ride; he feels left behind by Sando and Loonie. The identity he had carved out for himself seems to falter. For the first time, Bruce feels not enigmatically solitary but just simply lonely.

Another big storm arrives, but Loonie and Sando do not come by to pick Bruce up as he might expect. He goes to Sando’s house and discovers that the two of them have gone for the Nautilus again. Hurt, Bruce decides to surf Old Smoky on his own, taking Sando’s Brewer surfboard that he had refused to surf on at the Nautilus. His reckless decision works out well at first, as he catches a massive wave successfully. The confidence gets to Bruce’s head, and he goes for another ride, but he gets slammed and held down worse than ever before. When he finally surfaces, the board is long gone, and he must swim to shore for an hour.

Bruce comes back by Sando’s house to retrieve his bike, but Eva sees him bloodied and bashed and insists that he come inside. She feeds him and treats his wounds. She reveals that Sando and Loonie are planning a trip to Java. Bruce finds himself attracted to Eva in this moment but leaves in a hurry.

Back at home, Bruce smokes the hash Loonie gave him. He sits through an anxious dinner with his parents. That night he dreams again of drowning. In the morning, his father confronts him about looking like he’s been in a fight. Bruce reveals that his injuries are from surfing, then asks his father about the man he saw swallowed by a wave many years ago. His disdainful father refuses to answer and leaves for work.

Bruce finds Loonie with a black eye and split lip, immediately deducing that his father Karl had beat him. Loonie gives Bruce props for surfing Old Smoky by himself and then says that he’s going away soon. Bruce reveals that he knows about the Java trip from Eva, and in that moment, he realizes their friendship is over. Though they don’t know it, the two will never see each other again.

While playing soccer at recess one day, Bruce sees Sando pull up outside the school. He reluctantly goes over to talk to him. Sando invites Bruce to a send-off for him and Loonie, but Bruce declines. Sando mentions that the Brewer surfboard Bruce lost was recovered, and then he salutes him on his bravery for surfing Old Smoky solo. When Bruce gets home, the surfboard is in his yard, a gift from Sando.