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Chapter 23: Maleficium
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
In September, Bunny starts first grade. Billions of berries ripen in the bogs, and Agnis declares they should go berry-picking. Quoyle invites Wavey and Herry. Ken brings them across the bay, inspecting Quoyle, Agnis, the girls, and the house. In the fields behind the abandoned glove factory, Wavey and Quoyle pick near each other, at least until Agnis sends them back to the parking lot for the picnic basket she forgot.
Despite the difficulties it presents, Newfoundland offers a bounty to those drawn to make a life there. Traditional ways, like gathering and preserving berries, offer more security than the distant government’s attempts to modernize the economy through ill-advised investments like the glove factory.
Themes
Walking back toward the fields, they stop to watch a double-towered iceberg that’s floated into the bay collapse. Quoyle reaches out to touch Wavey and Wavey, afraid of his desire, tries to put him off by telling him the story of how her husband, Herold Prowse, died. He was working on a brand-new oil rig that collapsed in a storm in the early morning hours of January 29, 1981. There were no survivors. Later, it came to light that the rig wasn’t up to code and that the workers were poorly trained. Wavey tells Quoyle she thinks of Herold whenever she looks at the sea that holds his body. He understands—he can’t forget Petal, either—but he also resents this ghostly dead husband.
The romantic chemistry between Quoyle and Wavey has become increasingly clear to them and to readers. But—not unlike Agnis and Quoyle— Wavey is haunted by her past. Finding love will require her to reckon with her past and choose a happier future. Herold’s death further implicates a model of modernity which offers empty promises of wealth and security to vulnerable people. Given the collapse of the fisheries in Newfoundland, described elsewhere by Jack and Billy, people like Herold had to seek employment in other industries like fossil fuel extraction. The book typifies the greed of these industries in the disaster, strongly implying that the oil company knowingly cut corners to save costs and put its employees’ lives at risk.
Themes
But Quoyle doesn’t push Wavey and walks behind her at a respectful distance, until she seems to change her mind. She turns toward him, reaches out, and suddenly they’re tumbling over each other and kissing in the grass. Then, Wavey hears the waves and thinks of Herold’s body. She runs back toward Bunny, Sunshine, Herry, and Agnis, the picnic basket banging against her legs. Quoyle lies in the sweet heather and watches her. Everything seems enormously important and significant. He thinks he can see the very structure of life laid out before him: the eternal power of rock and sea and the tiny, finite lives of people and animals. Everything seems pure and beautiful, and he believes for a second that everything will be the way it should be.
The book dramatizes the complex and often incomplete process of grief through Wavey’s indecision in this moment. She both wants and doesn’t want Quoyle, and the book refuses to resolve the conflict neatly. It thus faithfully mirrors the messiness of real life. And even though he’s momentarily frustrated in his romantic desires, the fact that he has a chance at love again fills Quoyle with hope and joy. He’s developing a new perspective on life, one which takes into account the broader world, not just his tiny little slice of it.
Themes
