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Chapter 17: The Shipping News
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Shipping News, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Love and Family
Redemption, Courage, and Happiness
Life and Death
Resilience and Survival
Modernity
Summary
Analysis
One day, Quoyle gives Wavey and Herry a ride to and from the library. Wavey tells Quoyle all about Down’s Syndrome and how after Herry was born she made it her mission to make sure that he and other children like him had a fair chance in life rather than being “stuffed away” or “cast out.” Wavey vibrates with passion while she talks. Quoyle feels as nervous as if this is a date, not just a ride. He finds Wavey unbearably attractive. Afterwards, he takes her with him to pick up Bunny and Sunshine. Wavey invites them all back to her house for tea, but one of the wooden yard decorations is a white dog, and Bunny refuses to get out of the car.
Wavey has faced her share of trial and difficulty, just like Quoyle. But it hasn’t ruined her; in fact, her own difficulties seem to have made her even more conscientious about the needs of others. Besides, she loves Herry unconditionally, in a way that Quoyle’s parents failed to love him. Her passion for helping others inspires—and proves attractive to—Quoyle. But as comfortable as he feels with her, Bunny’s reaction forces him to remember how much upheaval his family has been through recently.
Themes
One Saturday, Quoyle investigates a decaying iceberg in the bay as he returns from procuring lobsters for dinner. Agnis plans to make lobster pie (Bunny doesn’t like steamed lobsters because they look like spiders). She invited Dawn to have dinner with them.
The icebergs that occasionally float into the bay suggest the harsh wildness and unpredictability of this corner of the world. Still, there are pleasures to be found in good food and friendship.
Themes
Bunny and Sunshine beg Quoyle for a boat ride. Outside, Bunny teaches Sunshine a scary game that involves laying down and looking up at the house at such an angle that the passing clouds make it seem like the house is falling down on them. Bunny has less fear than Sunshine. But on the boat ride, she thinks she sees the shape of the white dog in the curling wake foam and panics. Quoyle tries to logically explain how that can’t be, but she can’t calm down.
Even as Quoyle, Agnis, and Dennis renovate the house, it retains its alarming aspects, at least as far as Bunny is concerned. This suggests that some things—like the Quoyle family history—are so broken they cannot be redeemed. Still, she treats the house-falling illusion as a game, and this in turn hints that, given time and love, she will be able to overcome her real fears—like the loss and death the white dog represents.
Themes
The sight of solid, ungainly Dawn laboring up the walk to the house by contrast reminds Quoyle painfully of Petal. It turns out that she doesn’t like eating lobsters either, because they look like spiders. Quoyle expects this comment to set Bunny off, but instead Bunny makes an ostentatious show of enjoying the pie. Dawn ignores Bunny and turns to Quoyle, tells him how Bayonet and Silver skipped town without paying. Agnis isn’t upset. She says she’ll contact them when she gets her things from the States—she has their address on paperwork from earlier jobs. This, in turn, reminds Quoyle of how few of her things have arrived, despite her repeated statements that she was having them shipped.
It’s unclear whether Agnis has invited Dawn to dinner in an attempt to set her up with Quoyle or because she herself is interested—readers know that she’s gay even if Quoyle doesn’t. In any case, Dawn looks so out of place coming up to the house that it’s immediately clear that she doesn’t belong with this family. Her lack of ease contrasts distinctly with the natural way things are unfolding between Wavey and Quoyle. The fact that Agnis hasn’t made her own move to the island permanent by bringing all her things suggests that, despite her insistence on renovating the house, she’s also not quite sure if it can be redeemed.
Themes
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