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Symbols
The green house represents the weight of history and familial dysfunction. The Quoyles, who dragged the house across the frozen sea ice from Gaze Island to Newfoundland a century before the events in the book, have a bad reputation on the northern coast of Newfoundland both because they were reputed to be wrackers (people who lured ships into wrecking on the rocks and then pirated their cargoes) and because of multiple reports of incest and other forms of sexual deviance. In the present, Agnis tries to downplay this history, but she cannot escape it, especially because she was one of its victims: her half-brother Guy sexually assaulted her repeatedly throughout her childhood. Nevertheless, she is at first determined to reclaim the house for herself and for the newer and less morally compromised generations of Quoyles represented by Quoyle, Bunny, and Sunshine. And her attempts to renovate the house and make it more modern and comfortable show that she wants a better future for herself and the others. But the novel implies that she inadvertently limits herself by clinging to the past in this way. When a late-winter storm sweeps the house off the rock to which it’s tethered, the book pointedly suggests that no good can come of Agnis’s plan. Only when she and Quoyle (and Wavey and others) decide to close the painful chapters of their pasts—Agnis’s sexual abuse and the loss of her lover Irene; Quoyle’s and Wavey’s painful first marriages—and look toward the future can they find happiness.
House Quotes in The Shipping News
The The Shipping News quotes below all refer to the symbol of House. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 15: The Upholstery Shop
Quotes
“Yes of course I remember. […] There was another white dog adventure couple weeks ago. You know that little white stone I had on my garden rock? If you squinted at it it looked like a dog’s head? She come pounding on the door yelling her head off. I thought something terrible’d happened. Couldn’t get her to stop yelling and tell me what was the matter. At last she holds out her hand. There’s a tiny cut on one finger, tiny, about a quarter of an inch long. One drop of blood. I put a bandage on it and she calmed down. Wouldn’t say how she got the cut. But a couple days later she says to be that she threw away ‘the dog-face stone’ and it bit her. She says it was a dog bite on her finger.”
The aunt laughed to show it wasn’t anything to have a fit about.
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Chapter 33: The Cousin
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The house was heavy around him, the pressure of the past filling the rooms like odorless gas. The sea breathed in the distance. The house meant something to the aunt. Did that bind him? The coast around the house seemed beautiful to him. But the house was wrong. Had always been wrong, he thought. Dragged by human labor across miles of ice, the outcasts straining against the ropes and shouting curses at the godly mob. Winched onto rock. Groaning. A bound prisoner straining to get free. The humming of the taut cables. That vibration passed into the house, made it seem alive. That was it, in the house he felt he was inside a tethered animal, dumb but feeling. Swallowed by the shouting past.
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In the man before him, in the hut, crammed with the poverty of another century, Quoyle saw what he had sprung from. For the old man was mad, the gears of his mind stripped long ago to clashing discs edged with the stubs of broken cogs. Mad with loneliness or lovelessness, or from some genetic chemical jungle, or the flooding betrayal that all hermits suffer. Lops of fishing line underfoot, the snarl tangled into compacted detritus, a churn of splinters, sand, rain, sea wet, mud, bits of wool, gnawed sheep ribs, spruce needles, fish scales and bones, burst air bladders, seal offal, squid cartilage, broken glass, torn cloth, dog hair, nail pairings, bark and blood.
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Get the entire The Shipping News LitChart as a printable PDF.
House Symbol Timeline in The Shipping News
The timeline below shows where the symbol House appears in The Shipping News. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 5: A Rolling Hitch
...the northern coast of Newfoundland, Agnis consults a map. She’s anxious to learn if the house at Quoyle’s Point is still standing. She tells Quoyle it will be better for him...
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...and Quoyle drink, a breeze shifts the fog, and Agnis catches a glimpse of the house on the point. Carrying Bunny and Sunshine on their shoulders, she and Quoyle hike the...
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The house seems solid enough, even if half the windowpanes are gone and the paint—a sickly green...
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...she would never sleep forever. Then she walks off. On the far side of the house, she sees a white dog in the brush. Her alarmed screams bring Quoyle and Agnis...
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Chapter 6: Between Ships
Sitting by the campfire, Quoyle and Agnis discuss making the house livable. It needs new windows, a new door, new drywall, a new waterline, new second-story...
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Chapter 8: A Slippery Hitch
...need someone to look after them during the day, they all need to get the house fixed up, and Quoyle needs to get over himself and get a boat. Quoyle shrinks...
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...the office, Quoyle complains to his colleagues about the idea of moving out to the house on the Point; he says he’d rather go back to the United States than buy...
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Chapter 10: The Voyage of Nutbeem
...mention of Dennis reminds Quoyle to ask what he told Agnis about fixing up the house. She reports that Dennis thinks he can have the house habitable within two weeks and...
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Chapter 11: A Breastpin of Human Hair
The family moves into the house a few weekends later, Agnis arriving on Friday in her brand-new blue pickup truck and...
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When Quoyle, Bunny, and Sunshine arrive, Bunny is upset to find that the house is still green. Quoyle promises they can repaint it someday, after it’s fixed—at that moment,...
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Quoyle returns to the house, full of ideas for how he can fix up the path and make his own...
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Chapter 12: The Stern Wave
Bunny runs from the dock to the house with her finger and thumb pinched together. She tells Agnis that the biggest thing in...
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Chapter 18: Lobster Pie
...Bunny teaches Sunshine a scary game that involves laying down and looking up at the house at such an angle that the passing clouds make it seem like the house is...
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The sight of solid, ungainly Dawn laboring up the walk to the house by contrast reminds Quoyle painfully of Petal. It turns out that she doesn’t like eating...
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Chapter 20: Gaze Island
...mostly keeps to himself but who, according to Billy, may resent Agnis for taking the house. He is cut in the mold of the old-fashioned “wild,” inbred,” murderous Quoyles. The Quoyles...
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...took things from shipwrecks at one time or another, when the opportunity arose. The Quoyles’ house used to sit not far from the cemetery, before Gaze Island got religion and the...
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Chapter 23: Maleficium
...green plant Wavey told him makes good salads. Triumphantly, he takes them back to the house, but just as he finished the sauce, he realizes he doesn’t have linguine. Agnis chides...
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...wakes Quoyle up. He looks through the window but can’t see anyone prowling near the house. Later that morning, he tries to insist that they look the old man (Nolan) up....
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Chapter 24: Berry Picking
...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,...
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Chapter 26: Deadman
Near the end of September, Quoyle gets a weekend to himself at the house. On Friday afternoon, he buys groceries and lugs his old Gammy Bird typewriter across the...
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...Quoyle goes for a walk to the end of the point. As he leaves the house, a bit of knotted twine falls from the latch. Finally, he reaches the end of...
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Chapter 28: Skater’s Chain Grip
...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...
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Chapter 30: The Sun Clouded Over
...will take all winter. Then in the spring, they can all move back to the house together, unless Quoyle and the girls decide to go back to the states.
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Chapter 33: The Cousin
...Cove—doubtless belonging to the mysterious cousin, Nolan. He ignores it, but when he enters the house—the big green house that feels so ominous and so wrong tied to the rock—he finds...
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Chapter 38: The Sled Dog Driver’s Dream
In the Burkes’ house, Agnis hears the wind, too. In St. John’s, Nolan feels satisfied at the epic winds...
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