The Shipping News

Introduction To Senior Literature- Major Essay

Semester 1

1059 words

Just as Newfoundlanders have to confront the sea, survive it, so people have to face life’s traumas and find the will to go on.

To what extent is Proulx saying people must ‘weather the storms’ of life and reconcile the past with the future?

To face life’s storms is not to reconcile the past with the future, meaning to be happy with it, but to confront the past, conquer it, and then accept it. Acceptance in this instance, meaning to acknowledge the past, and acknowledge that it cannot be changed. It does not need to be understood, simply recognised as something that has happened. In acceptance, feelings of anger, regret and guilt are dissipated. These are the steps that are to be taken in order to cope, “weather the storms” of life and move forward. All of the characters in the novel have to cope with their lives, some of which are more difficult than others.

Quoyle had many traumatic events in his life, and until he went to Newfoundland he was not coping with them. It was through help from others that he could confront, conquer and accept his past to start truly coping with life. Other characters, including Wavey and Agnis also have to confront, conquer and accept their pasts to cope and get on with life. Although it is not a matter of life and death as to whether the characters cope with life, they will have to face it eventually. Newfoundlanders undertake this idea, and learn how to confront, conquer and accept what happens in their lives.

Wavey has her own past to confront and accept. Throughout the novel and her development of the relationship with Quoyle, she has to learn to trust again after her husband’s treatment of her, and accept his death. She did this through her relationship with Quoyle, by learning to develop a mutually open and trusting relationship. Their trust was developed but a sharing of common painful experiences with their spouses, in a safe and comfortable environment. Wavey was able to share her secrets with Quoyle, because he was able to share his with her first. “The way Quoyle talked of his love, but never the woman? Could pull out one from her own skein of secrets.” (Pg 307) Wavey’s trust enables her to accept her husband’s behaviour towards her and his death, so she can move forward in her life.

Another example of a trusting relationship that is formed is one with Agnis and the new Quoyle family. Her past relationships with her family was one comprised of secrets, guilt, shame and mistrust. Her relationship with her brother was one containing all of these elements. The affiliation with her brother is punctuated by an incident of rape, on her brothers doing. The incident took place at a pond, which Agnis happens to come across. When she does so she is flooded with childhood memories, and whilst they still make her feel disheartened she is able to acknowledge that it happened, and that she cannot change that fact. She recognises that it has made her stronger. “She had worked her way off the rocks and shoals. Had managed. Still managed.” (Pg 226) When she first comes across the pond and recalls the rape, she stands and looks at the pond, and thought it to be, “small, uninteresting. No reason to go down to it” (Pg 225.) The pond was no longer of any significance to her and her new life.

Quoyle’s life was one full of tragedy and pain, but he never learned to cope with this tragedy and pain. When his parents commit suicide and Petal dies in a car crash after she runs away, Quoyle has no idea how to deal with what has happened, but when he moves to Newfoundland he learns how to deal with these things through the help of the