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Chapter 3: Strangle Knot
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
Within a month, Quoyle, Bunny, Sunshine, Agnis, and Agnis’s dog Warren are aboard a ferry bound for Newfoundland. It didn’t take long for Agnis to convince Quoyle to leave his sad Mockingburg life behind and come with her as she moved back to the island. Petal’s life insurance paid out $50,000 after her death, more than enough to help Quoyle get a fresh start. And Partridge—now retired from the newspaper business and driving a truck himself—still has enough industry connections to help Quoyle get an interview for a job reporting the shipping news at the Killick-Claw’s weekly paper.
Quoyle may not have many people in his life on whom he can rely, but he can truly rely on the few he does have. The book portrays his decision to move to Newfoundland as more happenstance than careful consideration, and in this way, all of the preceding tragedy and upheaval starts to feel almost a little bit lucky. Quoyle clearly didn’t fit in where he was, and now he’s going someplace new—someplace that might help him find what he lacks.
Themes
On the ferry ride, Quoyle suffers from terrible seasickness. Bunny and Sunshine treat the voyage as an adventure. And Agnis walks the decks, conscious of the island calling her home. She’s anxious to return, even though she knows it’s a harsh, unforgiving place. Yet, the Vikings, the Basques, the French, English, Spanish, and Portuguese all found themselves drawn there, thanks to the rich fishing and lucrative sealing and whaling routes. And, she knows, people say times are getting better. She wonders which has changed more since she left: the island or herself.
Newfoundland isn’t an easy place to live. Yet, for generations and generations of people, the rewards have been worth the sacrifices. Agnis’s homesick musings foreshadow how much the island will demand of Quoyle—at the moment, in the throes of seasickness, he doesn’t seem quite up to the challenge—but also hint at the rewards that await if he can rise to the occasion.
Themes
