The Boat Each main character in Alistar MacLeod’s “The Boat” demonstrates stoic endurance against nature, life’s difficulties, or outright hostility. The Narrator of the story is a grown up man who reflects back on his life from when his father was still alive. Moreover, the mother/wife is the central conflict of the story; she values her traditional ways in the aspect of education being useless and unimportant, and also does not want her family to live a life other than a life of the sea nor does she want her family meeting people from the outside world. However, the father/husband is the central character of the story, he did not quite agree with the same lifestyle as his wife; he was a fisherman who not in any way enjoyed the fishing lifestyle. …show more content…
Looking from the viewpoint of a person who was always doing the right things and stood on the sidelines, watching everyone around them make mistakes, seeing people’s rights and wrongs, realizing that as they grow up, the image of a perfect family does not exist.
In the future the son (narrator) becomes a university professor. However, he discovers himself, smoking cigarettes, reading books and does not really like his job, similar to how his father felt when he was alive. “…When one teaches at a great Midwestern university. And I know then that day will go by as have all the days of the past ten years, for the call and the voices and the shapes and the boat were not really there in the early morning’s darkness and I have all kinds of comforting reality to prove it” (MacLeod 2). At this point the reader understands that the narrator pursued his fathers dream, but as he grew older he realizes he wish he lived the life of a …show more content…
fisherman. As one grows as a child, one may see their mother as a hero; cooks and cleans, make’s clothes, goes the whole nine yards, but as one grows older; they may have a different conception of their mother they never thought was possible. The mother of the story is introduced as a woman who has strong beliefs about structure and tidiness. For example, in the story the narrator explained that she would not sleep in the same bed as her husband because he left his room filthy, and she loathed disorder in rooms (MacLeod 8). She is characterized as a person who is close-minded, ignorant, very traditional, passionate about the sea, high expectations, and controlling. Living a life of the sea was the only way to live and even remotely thinking to live another way, such as pursuing a life in education would be foolish. She would say to her children “ In the next world God will see to those who waste their lives reading useless books when they should be about their work…I would like to know how books help anyone to live a life” (MacLeod 10). This indicates the mother is stubborn about any other lifestyle. Whereas, the father in the story was a man who lived a life of the sea, yet he did not wish on living such a lifestyle. Having to sacrifice one’s personal wants and needs for the benefit of loved ones is selfless and admirable.
The father’s personality is portrayed as messy, disorganized, may have a temper with his wife from time to time and distant from friends and family. He finds ways to incorporate the outside world into his everyday life. For instance, in the story there was symbolism shown through him taking the extra time out of his day to take tourists from his daughter’s work, on boat rides; which showed his daughters and himself a sense of wanting to be apart of an advanced society. As in the story, the narrator states, “The tourists with their expensive clothes and cameras and sun glasses…all of them liked my father very much and, after he’d brought them back, they invited him to their rented cabins…he proceeded to get very drunk up there with the beautiful view and strange company and abundant liquor” (MacLeod 12-13). The father had seen the admiration in the tourist’s eyes when looking out at the sea, just as he used to feel. Getting the sense of gratitude from people other than his close-minded family and friends gave him a feel of happiness, which led him into singing all night with cheerfulness. Nonetheless, the father may have thought to himself if pursuing his life within education would have changed the characteristics about himself he has in the present day. Clarifying that if the father did pursue his dreams in reality, perhaps the way he views his life would still be
the same way, wondering why he did not become a fisherman and continue to resent parts of his life. The story leaves the reader questioning a lot of things; such as if the father and son pursued the lifestyles they originally wanted, they would still be left wondering what if. In the end of the story the mother is left with bitterness because her husband dies and her children do not speak to her, due to her traditional ways. The son is left with yearning, cold, depressing, and regretful because of the decisions he has made and the death of his father. This moral of the story teaches life lessons, such as one cannot control other people’s lives, death is inevitable and one needs to make ones own decisions without the influence of others. Works Cited MacLeod, Alistair. “The Boat”, Island: The Collected Stories. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 200. Print
“The Boat”, narrated by a Mid-western university professor, Alistar MacLeod, is a short story concerning a family and their different perspectives on freedom vs. tradition. The mother pushes the son to embrace more of a traditional lifestyle by taking over the fathers fishing business, while on the other hand the father pushes the son to live more autonomously in an unconstrained manner. “The Boat” focuses on the father and how his personality influences the son’s choice on how to live and how to make decisions that will ultimately affect his life. In Alistair MacLeod’s, “The Boat”, MacLeod suggest that although dreams and desires give people purpose, the nobility of accepting a life of discontentment out weighs the selfishness of following ones own true desires. In the story, the father is obligated to provide for his family as well as to continue the fishing tradition that was inherited from his own father. The mother emphasizes the boat and it’s significance when she consistently asked the father “ How did things go in the boat today” since tradition was paramount to the mother. H...
The narrator faces an internal Man vs. Himself conflict in “A Secret Lost in the Water” when he realizes that he no longer remembers his father’s gift. “Somewhere along the roads I’d taken since the village of my childhood I had forgotten my father’s knowledge. ‘Don’t feel sorry… nowadays fathers can’t pass on anything to the next generation’” (Carrier, 96). This impacts the narrator because it gives him a sense of regret. Consequently, the statement made him feel like he, who is a father now himself, may not be able to pass down any of his knowledge to his kids. Although, this teaches him that it is important to hold onto certain knowledge passed down because it is the only way that it can be remembered and preserved.
In 2010 author Andre Dubus III had an excerpt published called “My Father Was a Writer”. The author writes about how his father who was a Marine and how life was as a military family. Eventually the stresses of being a Marine took its toll on the relationship between his father and the family. In 1963, the author’s grandfather passed away and not long after his father retired from The Marines and traveled down a new path and was accepted into Iowa Writers’ Workshop. As time went by the father’s life began to change. From hugging and kissing his wife to letting his appearance change from clean cut and shaved to growing his hair and having a mustache. Showing the author and his siblings more attention from sitting with them at night just to tell
“None of them knew the color of the sky.” This first sentence in Stephen Crane’s “The Open Boat” implies the overall relationship between the individual and nature. This sentence also implies the limitations of anyone’s perspective. The men in the boat concentrate so much on the danger they are in, that they are oblivious and unaware to everything else; in other words, maybe lacking experience. “The Open Boat” begins with a description of four men aboard a small boat on a rough sea. The central theme of this story is about confronting Nature itself. “The Open Boat" is Stephen Crane’s account from an outsider’s point of view of the two days spent in a small boat. The correspondent is autobiographical in nature; Stephen Crane was shipwrecked off the coast of Florida while working as a war correspondent. The correspondent in “The Open Boat” portrays the author. Mainly through the correspondent, Crane shows the power of nature and how one man’s struggle to survive ultimately depends on fate.
In the short story “ The Open Boat,” by Stephen Crane, Crane does an outstanding job creating descriptive images throughout the entire story. With saying this, Crane uses symbolism along with strong imagery to provide the reader with a fun and exciting story about four guys who 's fight was against nature and themselves. Starting early in the book, Crane creates a story line that has four men in a great amount of trouble in the open waters of the ocean. Going into great detail about natures fierce and powerful body of water, Crane makes it obvious that nature has no empathy for the human race. In this story, Crane shows the continuous fight that the four men have to endure in able to beat natures strongest body of water. It 's not just nature the men have to worry about though, its the ability to work together in order to win this fight against nature. Ultimately, Crane is able to use this story, along with its vast imagery and symbolism to compare the struggle between the human race and all of natures uncertainties.
"The Open boat" directly tells the readers that facing the power of nature is actually a test of a person 's psychological strength rather than the physical strength. Throughout the story, multiple ways are used to depict characters ' emotion, mentality, and behaviors by the Author. Furthermore, the author shows the reader the importance of psychological strength and how effective it is to influence others by using one 's psychological strength.
It has often been compared to as a microcosm of society, with each of the men coming together to form a singular, perfectly functioning human machine. For example, the captain represents the leaders in the world. He directs the men in the boat, reminding the forgetful cook to bail out the boat every once and awhile, as well as directing Billie in which way to point the boat, or how to steer it, or just general advice to the rest of the men in the boat. The correspondent is the observers in society. He thinks about the nature of man and his relation to nature, as mentioned before. He is cold and calculating and thinks about everything while stuck on the boat. He eventually comes to the conclusion that nature is a cruel mistress whose job is to torture man endlessly, but he also finds that this isn’t true. “This tower is a giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented, in a degree, to the correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual-- nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent” (page 83). In this quote, the correspondent realizes much about himself and nature, all because he was stuck in that boat. The oiler represents the everyman, the subtle heros, the firemen and the postman who are
In the “Prodigal”, the boy whom the speaker is addressing to yearns to accomplish his own goals by leaving his hometown behind and entering the urbanized world that is filled with endless opportunities and possibilities, including “[becoming] an artist of the provocative gesture”, “wanting the world and return carrying it”, and “[reclaiming] Main Street in a limo.” However, despite all these ambitious opportunities the boy wishes to pursue, he is ultimately unable to alter the perception of others who are the most familiar with his character. Rather, the people who are the most acquainted with the boy will perceive him with the same view as in the past. The thought of a newly changed boy that embraced a completely different identity while accomplishing several achievements, is incapable of affecting their perception of the past young boy from the county. This is illustrated when the speaker describes that even if the boy “stood in the field [he’d] disappear” and was still “aiming [his] eyes down the road” of opportunity, in the eyes of people who are most familiar with him, they will be unable to acknowledge this significantly changed individual. In complete contrast with those who are most familiar with him are others who are unfamiliar with his past. These individuals, whom the boy must have encountered while achieving his accomplishments,
In Macleod’s story, the boat is the symbol of tradition as it represents the way of family and life. The family as a unit and working together to run the boat is the foundation of tradition on the East Coast. The men would use the boat to fish and earn a living. The women would take care of the lobster traps and run the house in the same fashion as the men ran the boat. The tradition from the boat even happens with the naming of the boat which by tradition was named after the wife’s maiden name.
Thirteen years later the father and the son see eachother again and the author reveals that “Menconi could not imagine a better outcome” (Edwards 1). Specifically the son was taken when he was just one years old, and the father finds him when he is just fourteen. The father could not have been happier that he and his child were back together. Undeniably, in order to have a happy life, one must persevere to make dreams a
The short story “The Boat’ by Alistair Macleod, takes place in the roughly around the 1940’s in Cape Breton. It is about the harsh reality of the lives fisherman in Nova Scotia lead. The narrator is faced with numerous tasks. His decision that he has chosen not to live by the ocean and to pursue the life of a fisherman was the right decision for him in the beginning. The narrator is constantly trying to decide if he has chosen in the right career and life style for himself. He contrasts his past life, with his present life, to try to come to terms with himself. Although it was the right choice for him at first, it can easily be seen why it does not turn out to be the best choice in the future years. There are many reasons why he didn't
It was through the wrath of the mother who ridiculed the father and her daughters for reading. But despite the father’s desire to attend university and his resentment of the sea, he abandons his dream and becomes a fisherman in order to satisfy his wife’s hate against education and her love for the sea. When the narrator realizes the motive that drives the father to become a fisherman he realizes “then there came into my heart a very great love for my father and I thought it was very much braver to spend a life doing what you really do not want rather than selfishly following forever your own dreams and inclinations” (pg 10). For the rest of the father’s life, if he is not out fishing, he retreats into his room and reads books all day. The boat that the father fishes from symbolises the will of the wife where the father has slaved throughout his life. Ultimately by conforming to the mother’s demands, the father dies during a tragic storm while he is out fishing. Hence, it eventually cost the father his life trying to satisfy his wife. The father was unable to achieve his goals and lived the rest of his life in misery. In this scenario, by following the dreams of his wife, it led the father a life of unhappiness, and eventually led to his death. Therefore, self-sacrifice does not always lead to happiness but also a life of
“Resolve must be the firmer, spirit the bolder, courage the greater, as our strength grows less.” (Anonymous). The stories of The Revenant and The Open Boat use the idea of persevering as a main staple to design their stories around. The authors of these stories, Michael Punke and Stephen Crane, respectively, use characterization to emphasize and convey the theme of “Humans posses a spirit which must persevere”. This theme can be seen in the characters through their; physical challenges, mental challenges, and the loss of hope.
Have you ever thought that it is not the dreams you possess that form your path in life, but the influence of the people with whom you surround yourself? The author of “The Boat” composed a theme to the story to relay the message that you should not let the opinions of others have a controlling influence on your decisions in life. There are many narrative techniques that this author used to communicate the theme of this story. Three of these specific and effective techniques are: narration in first person; past and present tense narration; and repetitive narration. Each of these techniques contributes to the effective communication of the theme.
“The Open Boat” is fixated on four main characters that survived a shipwreck, the Oiler, the Correspondent, the Cook and the Captain. Each of these characters has...