Caniel Snowball

6/17/15

The Shipping News is a story about letting go of the past, the pursuit of happiness and a bunch of knots. Annie Proulx’s clever use of symbolism and interesting array of characters cohesively make an impactful tale and string the storyline together. A theme of having a troubled past becomes clear as it tactfully explained throughout the story to project potential for the growth. Quoyle is the story’s main protagonist who has a mid-life crisis at 36 when his cheating wife dies in a car accident and his parents commit suicide. Proulx describes Quoyle’s past as one with many shortcomings paired with his awkward looking chin and size that encapsulate him in a shell of low self-confidence. His newly found Aunt Agnis appears in his life after his parent’s deaths to bring him to Newfoundland for a new start on life. Quoyle find love and courage in Newfoundland and comes to point where his wife’s death doesn’t haunt him. The aunt, a widowed hard alcohol drinking closet lesbian, throughout the book attempts to stay busy with work and making plans. Upon introduction, Agnis appears to be a flat character but progresses into a more complex character when Quoyle’s father’s incestuous indiscretions with his sister are revealed. The reader can retrieve a sense of how she fits the operating method of someone after a sexual assault. Agnis’s refusal to show weakness or vulnerability and constant need to show she is in control adds depth to her character. When Cousin Nolan was placed in the psych facility and the house met its demise in the ocean, the conflict between the Quoyles, which includes Agnis, and their violent and strange past is lifted. Proulx assembles the plot with characters incidents that seem random but tow into the great theme. Silver and Bayonet Melville, the disgruntled owners of the Tough Baby boat who were not a happy couple when Quoyle left the boat and he subsequently found a Bayonet’s head in a suitcase. When she was apprehended, she was accompanied by a steward and it can be assumed that she ran away with the steward because she wasn’t happy. The pursuit of happiness is a central idea in the shipping news as evidenced by Quoyle’s misery in the story and his pursuit of a woman who he grew to love and marry and Agnis who named her dog after her dead lover and not telling anybody that he she was gay and then telling Quoyle she was moving in with Mavis. The knots at the beginning of the chapters foreshadow in some instances and also symbolize the different forms situations like can become. The google definition of a knot is “a fastening made by tying a piece of rope, string or something similar” this definition can be used when describing how people in the story’s lives are tied up in certain positions. In the first chapter where it describes a Quoyle as a spiral coil of rope “of one layer only…that it may be walked on” (Proulx 1) it foreshadows the Quoyle introduction and symbolizes his dilemma of letting people figuratively walk on top of him. Also in the beginning, there is no knot and just a rope or string, which is the beginning of every knot. Different knots are used to allude to different situations and at the end of the book, Proulx uses a quote from The Ashley Book of Knots that explains that as long as there are new reasons to make knots then more knots will be invented (324). Knots are symbolic of the constant changing path of life and that even though situations can get frayed and tangled that people can still find ways to renew themselves or reinvent their situation to receive different outcomes. Proulx writes about a place in Newfoundland where people don’t go to church and the narrative of incest and violence runs deep in its ancestral history. Their city is ruled by the sea from the food that they eat and to the choice of a transportation obtain and maintain to survive a commune around the community. The similar way the sea ruled the community as the Romans ruled most of the known world in Jesus’s time is evident. In a place that has a tone of a godless community, Jack Buggit, the owner of the Gammy Bird newspaper company is a man who has a supernatural ability to save lives. Ms. Proulx alludes to paranormal activity in a couple quotes and segments in the book. In the story, Nutbeam inquires “Have you noticed Jack’s uncanny sense about assignments? He gives you a beat that plays on your private inner fears. Look at you. Your wife was killed in an auto accident. What does Jack ask you to cover? Car wrecks, to get pictures while the upholstery is still on fire and the blood still hot. He gives Billy, who has never married for reasons unknown, the home news, the women’s interest page, the details of home and hearth— must be exquisitely painful to the old man. And me. I get to cover the wretched sexual assaults. And with each one I relive my own childhood. I was assaulted at school for three years, first by a miserable geometry teacher, then by older boys who were his cronies. To this day I cannot sleep without wrapping up like a mummy in five or six blankets. And what I don’t know is if Jack understands what he’s doing, if the pain is supposed to ease and dull through repetitive confrontation, or if it just persists, as fresh as on the day of the first personal event. I’d say it persists” (221). Jack Buggit is never told about these topics but he knows. Buggit rescues Quoyle from drowning when nobody knew where he was. Jack Buggit’s character was one that was always putting Quoyle and his staff in a position for them to get gratitude and he was proud of it. Proulx ability to slowly produce Jack Buggit’s character was truly superb. There are many similarities between Jesus and Jack Buggit. Jesus saved many people as did Jack. Jesus was a carpenter who lived by the way of the wood and nail and died by the way of the wood and nail as Jack Buggit lived by the way of the water and died by the way of the water. When Jesus was apprehended by the Romans his disciples had were nowhere to be found as when Jack was apprehended by the water none his followers were around. In the King James Version of the bible, before Jesus is crucified, it says “And they all forshook him and fled.” Proulx was alluding to that chapter when everyone moved on in their own lives like Tert Card going to St. Johns, Nutbeam to Brazil and Quoyle on his lift of confidence only to leave Jack alone where he would meet his demise. Proulx builds Jack’s character as a mentor and it’s not until the end of the book that readers see the final twist and climax in the story that reveal him as the true hero. Jack Buggit rising from the grave as Jesus did. The Shipping News is about growing away from old feelings and not letting the past prevent a bright future. In a story about a man named Quoyle, E. Annie Proulx produces textbook definitions of symbolism in both literary terms and in dictionary terms. Symbolism, according to literarydevices.net, is using symbol to mimic ideas and the dictionary.com definition is along the lines of using particular characters to convey a religious message. The book is slow in matters of reaching the climax but the resolution was worth the wait.

"Definition of Symbolism." Literary Devices. Ed. Literary Devices Editors. N.p, 02 July 2013. Web. 21 June 2015.
"Google Search." Google. Ed. Angus N. Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 1 Aug. 2010. Web. 21 June 2015.
"Mark 14:50." The Bible: New King James Version. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1982. N. pag. Print.
Proulx, Annie. The Shipping News. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993. Print.
"symbolism." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. n.d. Web. 21 Jun. 2015.