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Chapter 12: The Stern Wave
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
Diddy Shovel calls the Gammy Bird office to tell Quoyle that there’s an interesting ship—one that reportedly belonged to Hitler—in the harbor. Despite the driving rain, Quoyle and Billy Pretty head toward the harbor in Quoyle’s disintegrating old station wagon. Quoyle is jealous of Agnis’s new truck, but he’s anxious about how fast the life insurance money is disappearing. On the drive, Billy points out the mysterious woman—Wavey Prowse—and her son, Herry. Herry has a disability because, Billy claims, of the grief Wavey suffered when her husband, Herry’s father, died at sea while she was pregnant. Billy and Quoyle give Wavey and Herry a ride to their home.
Quoyle frets about what’s going wrong in his life on the drive rather than focusing on what’s going well—he’s developing friendships with the people around him, including Billy. Just in time, he passes Wavey on the road and gets another lesson in resilience. She hasn’t let the loss of her husband or her son’s disability (he has Down’s Syndrome, although the book doesn’t specify this until a later chapter) keep either of them from an active engagement in life or their community.
Themes
In the harbor, Quoyle and Billy find the boat. It’s built like a barge with lee boards—to give stability in high seas—on either side like wings. She’s called the Tough Baby. Billy shouts a request to board and a white-haired man (later identified as Bayonet Melville) sticks his head out of a door. Next to the door sits a rope-handled suitcase. The man says he’s been arguing with his wife and, to avoid her, will be happy to give them a tour of the boat, which he bought from an Italian noblewoman and lovingly restored. He says it’s impervious to the worst the sea has to offer.
Naval architects obsess about making their boats stable and capable of withstanding whatever conditions they encounter. The novel suggests that it’s just as important to develop resilience in life, although people like Quoyle, who don’t take an active and reflective role in shaping their lives, will find themselves drifting about at the whims of fate. This is one lesson that looking at ships ultimately teaches Quoyle. Readers should take careful note of the suitcase which Quoyle notices by the door—it will show up again later.
Themes
Eventually, Bayonet invites Quoyle and Billy into a salon where his wife Silver is listening to music and drinking. The room is grand and opulent in a way that sets Quoyle’s teeth on edge. Silver insists that Bayonet tell their guests about Hurricane Bob, when the Tough Baby broke loose from her moorings off the coast of Maine. She not only smashed up 17 other vessels in the harbor but several beach houses, too. Silver thinks this story is hilarious.
Bayonet and Silver Melville hardly seem happier in their marriage than Quoyle and Petal were. This experience shows Quoyle (and readers) how easy it is for love to fall short of the ideal. Silver’s glee over the boat’s destructiveness suggests that she herself harbors violent tendencies and aligns her with the malicious and vindictive Petal.
Themes
Eventually, Quoyle learns that Bayonet and Silver came to Newfoundland to have the furniture in their dining salon reupholstered by none other than the famous Agnis Hamm, who rudely relocated from Long Island to this “godforsaken rock.” As Billy and Quoyle leave, they hear the couple resuming whatever argument they were having when the newspapermen arrived.
The revelation about Agnis shows readers just how little Quoyle knows about the woman he followed to Newfoundland and emphasizes the degree to which he’s letting others (and circumstances) control his fate.
Themes
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