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Chapter 35: The Day’s Work
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
As winter wanes, Partridge calls Quoyle to tell him about the madness engulfing the United States. There are riots in Los Angeles. Someone shot at Mercalia’s truck on the highway, presumably because she was Black. And a disgruntled reader, angry that the Mockingburg Record refused to publish his unhinged letter to the editor about the riots, walked into the office with a machine gun and opened fire. Ed Punch and other former colleagues are dead or injured.
The timeline here fudges historical facts a little; the Rodney King Riots happened in April and May of 1992 but it’s still clearly midwinter in the story’s timeline. In any case, the increasing violence and disruption in Partridge and Mercalia’s lives contrasts sharply with the peacefulness and relative security of Quoyle’s. He’s traded some conveniences and luxuries in his move to Newfoundland, but he’s gained peace of mind. This chapter has perhaps the book’s starkest criticism of what it suggests is the chaos of modern life.
Themes
When Quoyle mentions all of this to Jack—while helping his boss gut his modest haul of codfish—Jack says it’s to be expected in the States. Then he complains about the small cod and the unfair fishing regulations made by distant government authorities. He only keeps fishing because if he lets his licenses lapse, he’ll never get permits again. He doesn’t want to end up barred from lobster fishing for life.
Jack looks with contempt on the United States as a backward place, even while he acknowledges the challenged Newfoundland faces. In other words, this chapter suggests that life is—or at the very least, can be—unfair and chaotic everywhere. The good life, then, consists of finding a place where one fits in and making the most of what one has, even when it’s not easy.
Themes
Late in February, Quoyle receives papers authorizing Nolan’s institutionalization. He feels guilty about signing them without at least seeing the old man, so he invites Wavey to join him on a trip down to St. John’s. She spends the day shopping for herself and Herry, and for Bunny and Sunshine—Quoyle has given her a list—while Quoyle visits the asylum. He brings Nolan a framed picture of a dog. Nolan seems so sane and oriented during their conversation that Quoyle plans to have him transferred back to Killick-Claw. Nolan says he wanted to be a pilot when he was younger, to escape Newfoundland forever. And he tells Quoyle about Agnis’s “trouble”—a self-administered abortion Nolan’s wife helped her with after Guy’s repeated sexual assaults left her pregnant.
Quoyle demonstrates more care and concern for the difficult cousin that he barely knows than his own family showed for him when he was growing up. It’s a sign of his innate generosity and kindness that the abuse he’s suffered has made him kinder and more open rather than closed off. Nolan gives Quoyle the last piece necessary to put together the picture of his dysfunctional family: the revelation of Guy’s abuse and its consequences. It's the ultimate perversion of what a family should mean—and what Quoyle is determined for family to mean to him. It’s notable that this revelation comes from Nolan. Although Agnis revealed some of this history to readers, she still only hinted at it, and this suggests how much shame she feels.
Themes
Later, Quoyle and Wavey have a nice dinner at their hotel’s dining room. They drink too much wine and go to see a movie. Then they go to bed, where they have sex for the first time. Afterwards, Wavey observes that this is the same hotel where she and Herold came on their honeymoon.
Quietly and without fanfare or emotional upheaval, Quoyle and Wavey have become a couple. Although they’re both still haunted by the ghosts of their past, their trip to St. John’s signals their intent to change the narrative of their lives and to live out a better future.
Themes
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In the morning, Quoyle learns that Nolan used a shard of glass from the picture frame to attack staff members and other ward inmates the night before. There will be no transfer back to Killick-Claw.
Nolan’s violence shatters Quoyle’s hope that he could avoid facing his family’s trauma. But he can try to do better for himself and others going forward, to redeem rather than rewrite the past.
Themes
