Jesson Buggit Character Analysis

“The way Jack carried on. Shocking. Thought if Dennis was a carpenter he’d be safe ashore. He was afraid, you see, afraid for him. And what we fear we often rage against. And Jack was right. See, he knows the sea has its mark on all Buggits.

“In due course, we had one of our winter storms. As the bad luck would have it the Polar Grinder as caught out. About two hundred miles east of St. John’s. February storm, savage as they come. Cold, forty-foot seas, hurricane-force wind roaring at fifty knots. Have you been at sea in a storm, Mr. Quoyle?”

“No,” said Quoyle. “And don’t want to be.”

“It never leaves you. You never hear the wind after that without you remember that banshee moa, remember the watery mountains, crests torn into foam, the poor ship groaning.”

Everything in the house tatted and doilied in the great art of the place, designs of lace waves and floe ice, whelk shells and sea wrack, the curve of lobster feelers, the round knot of cod-eye, the bristled commas of shrimp and fissured sea caves, white snow on black roc, pinwheeled gulls, the slant of silver rain. Hard, tortured knots encased picture frames of ancestors and anchors, the Bible was fitted with sheets of ebbing foam, the clock’s face peered out like a bride’s from a wreath of worked wildflowers. The knobs of the kitchen dresser sported tassels like a stripper in a bawd house, the kettle handle knitted over in snake-ribs, the easy chairs wore archipelagoes of thread and twine flung over the reefs of arms and backs.

“I get to cover the wretched sexual assaults. And with each one I relive my own childhood. I was assaulted at school for three years […] To this day I cannot sleep without wrapping up like a mummy in five or six blankets. And what I don’t know is if Jack understands what he’s doing, if the pain is supposed to ease and dull through repetitive confrontation, or if it just persists, as fresh as on the day of the first personal event. I’d say it persists.”

“Doesn’t he do the same thing to himself? Going out on the sea that claimed his father and grandfather, two brothers, the oldest son and nearly got the younger? It dulls it, the pain I mean. It dulls it because you see your condition is not unique, that other people suffer as you suffer. There must be some kind of truth in the old saying, misery loves company.”

Well, said Quoyle, they were children. Children should be protected from knowledge of death. And what about Bunny’s nightmares? Might get worse.

“But, m’dear, if they don’t know what death is how can they understand the deep part of life? The seasons and nature and creation—”

He didn’t want her to get going toward God and religion. As she sometimes did.

“Maybe,” said Wavey, “she has those nightmares because she’s afraid if she sleeps she won’t wake up—like Petal and Warren and her grandparents. Besides, if you look at the departed, you’ll never be troubled by the memory. It’s well-known.”

And so Quoyle agreed. And promised not to say that Jack was sleeping. And he would come along and get them all in the station wagon. In about fifteen minutes.

“The way Jack carried on. Shocking. Thought if Dennis was a carpenter he’d be safe ashore. He was afraid, you see, afraid for him. And what we fear we often rage against. And Jack was right. See, he knows the sea has its mark on all Buggits.

“In due course, we had one of our winter storms. As the bad luck would have it the Polar Grinder as caught out. About two hundred miles east of St. John’s. February storm, savage as they come. Cold, forty-foot seas, hurricane-force wind roaring at fifty knots. Have you been at sea in a storm, Mr. Quoyle?”

“No,” said Quoyle. “And don’t want to be.”

“It never leaves you. You never hear the wind after that without you remember that banshee moa, remember the watery mountains, crests torn into foam, the poor ship groaning.”

Everything in the house tatted and doilied in the great art of the place, designs of lace waves and floe ice, whelk shells and sea wrack, the curve of lobster feelers, the round knot of cod-eye, the bristled commas of shrimp and fissured sea caves, white snow on black roc, pinwheeled gulls, the slant of silver rain. Hard, tortured knots encased picture frames of ancestors and anchors, the Bible was fitted with sheets of ebbing foam, the clock’s face peered out like a bride’s from a wreath of worked wildflowers. The knobs of the kitchen dresser sported tassels like a stripper in a bawd house, the kettle handle knitted over in snake-ribs, the easy chairs wore archipelagoes of thread and twine flung over the reefs of arms and backs.

“I get to cover the wretched sexual assaults. And with each one I relive my own childhood. I was assaulted at school for three years […] To this day I cannot sleep without wrapping up like a mummy in five or six blankets. And what I don’t know is if Jack understands what he’s doing, if the pain is supposed to ease and dull through repetitive confrontation, or if it just persists, as fresh as on the day of the first personal event. I’d say it persists.”

“Doesn’t he do the same thing to himself? Going out on the sea that claimed his father and grandfather, two brothers, the oldest son and nearly got the younger? It dulls it, the pain I mean. It dulls it because you see your condition is not unique, that other people suffer as you suffer. There must be some kind of truth in the old saying, misery loves company.”

Well, said Quoyle, they were children. Children should be protected from knowledge of death. And what about Bunny’s nightmares? Might get worse.

“But, m’dear, if they don’t know what death is how can they understand the deep part of life? The seasons and nature and creation—”

He didn’t want her to get going toward God and religion. As she sometimes did.

“Maybe,” said Wavey, “she has those nightmares because she’s afraid if she sleeps she won’t wake up—like Petal and Warren and her grandparents. Besides, if you look at the departed, you’ll never be troubled by the memory. It’s well-known.”

And so Quoyle agreed. And promised not to say that Jack was sleeping. And he would come along and get them all in the station wagon. In about fifteen minutes.