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Chapter 22: Dogs and Cats
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
The weekend housework continues, although Agnis’s interest in fixing things begins to wane and she starts spending more time by herself. One Saturday, Quoyle decides to make calamari linguini in honor of Partridge, whom he misses. Agnis wishes for a fresh salad and starts plotting a garden for the following spring. When she goes outside to scout for a good spot, she sees someone coming along the road. Quoyle says it must be the “old man”—the distant cousin Billy has told him about. But he can’t remember the man’s name (Nolan) and Agnis refuses to acknowledge that they might have any forgotten kin on the island. She also doesn’t like it when Quoyle repeats Billy’s stories about the rapacious, wild, and inbred old Quoyles.
Just as Agnis, Quoyle, and the girls seem to be settling in, Nolan Quoyle begins to disrupt things. It seems that Quoyle won’t be allowed to merely drift along as he has been doing but that, at some point, he’s going to have to confront Nolan. If he doesn’t face his fears and his traumas, he risks ending up like Agnis, whose unwillingness to address the trauma in her own past—being sexually assaulted by Guy—leave her somewhat stuck. The novel also suggests that Quoyle cannot negate painful truths about the family or Agnis’s past by trying to ignore or downplay them.
Themes
Since they don’t yet have a garden, Quoyle takes Bunny and Sunshine with him to forage for Alexanders, a 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 him about his failure to plan ahead.
Wavey exemplifies what it means to live in harmony with one’s surroundings. She knows how to make do with what’s available and she’s teaching Quoyle how to do the same. With each lesson, he belongs more to this place and comes closer to finding, for the first time in his life, a real home.
Themes
The next morning, the shine of a flashlight sliding across his ceiling from outside 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. Agnis refuses to do that, or to visit the abandoned settlement in Capsize Cove. Places like that are depressing, she maintains, and the government should have burned them down long ago.
As time passes, Agnis’s attitude toward the past becomes more and more clear. She clings to her good memories and to her sense of belonging in the place where she grew up. But she doesn’t want to engage with her painful memories. Nolan’s refusal to disappear, however, suggests that it isn’t possible—or healthy—to avoid history. The only way forward is through acknowledgement and healing.
Themes
