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Chapter 33: The Cousin
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 in December, Tert Card treats Quoyle to a drink at Tert’s favorite dive bar and reveals that he’s moving to St. John’s to publish a newsletter for the oil industry. His wife and their children will stay behind. Tert taunts Quoyle by saying that Jack is making Billy the managing editor and that without Tert there, Quoyle’s days are likely numbered.
Tert’s family has been so unimportant to him that they only bear mentioning now that he’s leaving. Quoyle’s admirable devotion and love for his girls stands in stark contrast to Tert’s selfishness. And the book makes it very clear that Tert is a tragic figure—unloving and unloved.
Themes
Christmas was never Quoyle’s favorite holiday—it just emphasized the favoritism his parents showed Dick—but he can’t help but notice how excited everyone else seems to be as they make gifts and prepare for the pageant. It isn’t the school pageant Quoyle expects but is a community-wide variety show. Everyone shows up at the school auditorium in their finest clothes to listen to children singing carols and reciting poems, and adults singing their own songs and performing comic routines. Beety Buggit spins comical yarns about the locals’ misadventures, like one about Billy Pretty trying to carry his grandfather clock down the icy hill and sending a neighbor into the ditch when he slipped.
Quoyle approaches Christmas with dread, although readers already know how much he’s grown and his life has changed in the months since his arrival. The Christmas pageant shows the local community coming together in celebration and joy. It shows readers why some people continue to make their lives here despite all of the difficulties, by maintaining a sense of humor and by coming together to make one another’s lives more bearable and enjoyable.
Themes
A few days later, Quoyle and Wavey exchange gifts. He gives her a glass teapot and a scarf he purchased from a catalogue; she gives him a beautiful, perfectly fitted hand-knit sweater. He thinks of all the gifts he gave Petal, and the fact that the only “gift” she gave him were two store-bought eggs that she pulled randomly from the fridge. But he tried to interpret it as a meaningful gesture.
As a craft, knitting is related to the net-making that sustained fishing communities throughout history. Wavey’s gift thus metaphorically suggests the same thing as other knots in the book: the ties of affection and need that bind people together. And such a thoughtful and labor-intensive gift as a handknit sweater couldn’t contrast more sharply with Petal’s pathetic gesture.
Themes
A few days after that, while Quoyle and Dennis fell trees for firewood, Dennis suggests that they check on Nolan. This is something he and Beety do at least once a year. Quoyle, who hasn’t thought about the man since their one encounter, feels guilty for neglecting him. And indeed, Nolan is in very bad shape. Dennis thinks he needs to be institutionalized, something Quoyle should arrange as next-of-kin. If he needs help finding a place, Wavey and Beety have connections to the local charities. For some reason, the mention of Wavey in this moment makes Quoyle miss Petal.
Although Quoyle has learned a lot about community and love since he arrived in Newfoundland, he still has a ways to go, as he realizes when Dennis shows more concern for Nolan than Quoyle does. Love is about fulfilling mutual responsibilities toward others, even when it’s difficult. Really caring for others, as Beety and Wavey do, is hard—if fulfilling—work.
Themes
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