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Chapter 17
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Past the Shallows, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Brotherhood, Loyalty, and Hardship
Addiction and Abuse
Tragedy and Blame
Father Figures and Responsibility
The Duality of Nature
Summary
Analysis
After a day of fishing, Dad leaves Miles alone to clean the boat and take the abalone to the cannery. Since Martin has been out of commission after the shark incident, Jeff has been persuading Dad to come with him in the afternoons to illegally poach for abalone outside of the designated fishing zone. As Miles goes to the cannery on his own, he remembers Dad’s warning that if they lose the boat, he will end up like most of the other kids in town who drop out of high school to work at the cannery.
Hearkening back to Dad’s prior abandonment of Miles, he again shirks his fatherly duties and leaves his young son alone to finish their afternoon chores. Jeff’s presence has clearly had a detrimental effect on Dad without Martin there to balance out the situation, and he forgoes his responsibilities while slipping further into degeneracy.
Themes
Later that evening, Dad picks Miles up and begins driving erratically down the center of the road. Miles sees an oncoming truck and is afraid they will collide with it, but its headlights suddenly vanish. He wants to yell at Dad to pull over, but his father remains unfazed and continues speeding ahead. As they fly past the truck, Miles sees that its headlights seemed to disappear because it had hit an enormous bull. He is disturbed that neither the truck driver nor Dad attempted to slow down.
The surreal, dreamlike quality of this passage emphasizes Miles’s terror and disbelief at Dad’s erratic behavior. Since Miles was in the car during the accident that killed Mum, Dad knows that his son has lingering trauma surrounding car crashes. His decision to drive recklessly in spite of this knowledge shows his negligence and complete lack of concern for Miles’s wellbeing, while also suggesting that he may be driving under the influence of alcohol.
Themes
