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Chapter 27: Newsroom
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 late-October afternoon, Agnis goes for a ramble through the bogs. She comes upon a small, perfectly oval pond and remembers one chilly late-fall day in her childhood when she went ice skating there alone. It was a perfect afternoon, until Guy showed up. She skated and skated, but the pond was so small, she knew she would never be able to escape him.
Agnis’s memory captures the feeling of being trapped both by Guy in the moment and by her circumstances when she was a child. It reminds readers that life isn’t always easy—but her relative success as an adult suggests that humans are resilient enough to overcome many kinds of trauma.
Themes
Later, over a simple dinner of pancakes, Agnis and Quoyle discuss the impending winter snow. The road will be the only reliable way to get into town for work and school once the bay freezes, and keeping it plowed will cost at least $4,000 for the season. Quoyle thinks they should move into town for the winter. He, Bunny, and Sunshine can take over Nutbeem’s trailer if Agnis can find herself a room. As if on cue, it starts to snow.
It's notable that Agnis’s memory of being trapped is juxtaposed with the family’s decision to leave the house for the winter rather than risk getting trapped by snow and ice. Although it’s not possible to change the past, it is possible to pick one’s own way forward into the future. And that’s something Quoyle is becoming more and more comfortable doing. Here, he’s confident in his choice.
Themes
By the time Agnis gets into the shop the next day she has started to settle into the idea of spending the winter in town. Mrs. Bangs suggests that the family could buy the Burkes’ house—they’re moving to Florida—but Agnis doesn’t want to make that kind of permanent commitment to any place but the house on the Point. She sorts through the mail, which includes a package from Macau. It contains a sheaf of American money, tied with a thin strip of the blue leather they used for the Tough Baby’s dining salon.
Agnis isn’t ready yet to give up on her attempt to redeem her childhood by transforming the Quoyles’ house into a place of refuge or safety. But she’s at least practical enough to see the sense of sticking in town during the winter. Silver Melville’s payment arriving like this (cash isn’t traceable) implies that she is responsible for Bayonet’s death.
Themes
