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Chapter 5
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
Harry sneaks out of the house to give his friend Stuart the goodie bag he had gotten for him at the fair. Stuart lives in an old trailer with his mother, who sells berries from a roadside stall. When Harry arrives at his friend’s trailer, he realizes that Stuart and his mother have gone out to Huonville to watch over the stall (which is usually left to run on the honor system) amidst the busy traffic before and after the boat races. He leaves Stuart’s goodie bag by the front door and heads back toward home.
In the same vein as Harry’s loyal brotherhood with Miles and Joe, Harry also values Stuart enough to trek through the woods to deliver the goodie bag to him. It is implied that Stuart’s mother is a single parent working to support her son and that the young boy likely lacks a stable father figure. This reality could explain the bond between Stuart and Harry, who also lives in a single-parent household.
Themes
On his way back, Harry finds a dead bandicoot along the side of the road and wonders if he should take it to his brother Joe, who has a hobby of collecting roadkill and reassembling the animals’ skeletons. He is interrupted by a friendly puppy who comes to sniff the bandicoot carcass. The dog is “unable to hide its joy” and seems to beckon Harry to follow as it walks away from the road.
Joe’s hobby of reassembling roadkill skeletons is similar to Miles’s detached attitude toward the abalone in the previous chapter. His unusual nonchalance toward roadkill suggests that the losses of his loved ones have desensitized him toward death. The contrast between this dead bandicoot and the lively puppy represents nature’s dual forces of death and rebirth.
Themes
Harry entices the puppy to play fetch and begins to chase it as it runs into a clearing. He stops in his tracks when he sees a wooden shack and realizes it belongs to George Fuller, a man whom the local schoolchildren believe to be a monster who eats people and may have murdered his own parents. Suddenly, the door to the shack creaks open and Harry sprints away in terror, looking back to see George waving at him. Harry trips over something sharp and hears someone call his name as he falls to the ground. Once he gets up and is a safe distance from the shack, he wonders how George could possibly know his name.
While Harry finds joy and escapism in his environment, this passage shows the complexity of nature and the risk of placing trust in its unpredictability. Despite the puppy’s lighthearted innocence and instant companionship with Harry, the animal leads him to a potentially dangerous situation. George’s unsettling recognition of Harry is a mystery that implies he is somehow connected to the little boy and may be a different person than what rumors suggest.
Themes
