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Chapter 30: The Sun Clouded Over
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
Tert Card slams into the Gammy Bird office one cold November morning, disgusted with the cold and icy weather. He can’t wait to take his annual trip down to Florida. He asks the reporters for their news. One by one, they reel off their current stories.
To the same degree that Newfoundland seems to suit Quoyle and his family, it disgusts Tert Card. Nothing in the world is right for everyone, the book suggests. So it’s important to find one’s own place.
Themes
Billy Pretty has two stories about men caught breaking the law—one burgled a house, the other committed animal cruelty—both of whom stripped naked in jail and in court and got sent for psychiatric evaluation. There are also two missing persons and two unidentified bodies. Nutbeem has a story about people abusing the national healthcare system with laser hair removal, and a cholera epidemic in Peru. And he has more sexual assault stories than Tert can publish.
The catalog of stories provides local color and humor. The fact that Quoyle takes the zaniness in stride suggests just how comfortable he’s become in this community. There are real tragedies and horrors happening, which he now neither ignores (as he used to) nor hyper-focuses on. The good and the bad are all becoming part of life in his eyes.
Themes
Quoyle wrote up a ferry that crashed into a rock just out of St. John on a clear day, and a local truck that randomly burst into flames. He also has a story about twin brothers in Misky Bay, one of whom tried to murder the other. When the assailant was dragged to court, he did “the regular”—tore his clothes off. Tert wonders aloud how long Quoyle will last on the island—he’s more used to people fleeing than settling. Quoyle retorts he has no intention of leaving: Alvin is building him a boat, Bunny is doing well in school, and Agnis will be back in the spring. They’re staying. Tert wonders if Quoyle will change his mind after he sees Nutbeem’s trailer.
Because he himself wants to flee, Tert can’t imagine anyone wanting to stay in Killick-Claw or possibly Newfoundland itself. But Quoyle has found himself, a community that loves and supports him and his girls, a purpose, and an inner strength he didn’t know he had. It’s becoming clear that part of the reason he was so unhappy in New York was because he’s better suited to another kind of existence altogether, one more tied to the traditions of community and nature than the modern world offers.
Themes
