The Shipping News Chapters 25–27 Summary & Analysis

Summary

Chapter 25: Oil

Stopping for breakfast on his way to work, Quoyle finds Tert Card and Billy Pretty also at the restaurant. Card is suffering from canker sores and is acting irritable. He and Billy are in a quarrel over oil prospects in Canada. Tert Card explains to Quoyle that the McGonigle field was an oil reserve that was discovered in 1980 off the coast of Newfoundland. Card cannot wait for the economic boom that will hit when oil reserve is ready to be harvested. Billy, on the other hand, expects that outsiders, big international companies, will take the best of the reserve just as outsiders have all along corrupted the Newfoundland way of life. The spills will kill the last of the cod; Billy laments the exploitation of Newfoundland's natural resources. He reminisces about the old way of life, while Tert Card bitterly argues the benefits of technological advancements, telling them "'oil is strong and fish is weak.'"

Quoyle writes his column about a recent oil tanker spill. He begins by talking about a photograph of eight old-fashioned fishing boats, and ends by saying that no one would want to hang up a picture of an oilrig. Tert Card, upon reading the draft, hangs a picture of an oil tanker behind his desk. He proceeds to rewrite Quoyle's column into a short propaganda piece for oil tankers, and prints it along with his oil tanker picture. When Quoyle sees the paper, he becomes enraged. Jack Buggit tells Quoyle to keep writing his column as he wishes, and Tert Card to lay off Quoyle's work.

Chapter 26: Deadman

Quoyle, staying by himself in the old family house, is writing a column about the origin of the Plimsoll loading marks—the lines on vessels that show what level of load is safe for a vessel. At night, Quoyle has more nightmares about Petal, and in the morning, he finds a curious piece of knotted twine on his way out to take a walk to the end of the point. Once at the edge, he feels as if he is at the end of the world, staring down into a tumultuous sea. He sees some caves, the rock shaped like a dog, and a body in a yellow suit, floating. Quoyle goes out in his boat to try to save the man, but his inexperience and precarious boat cause him to capsize. He plunges under water and then, when he comes up, finds a cooler that had been in his boat to use as a floatation device. He has delusional thoughts that the cooler is filled with red coals keeping him warm. Eventually, Jack Buggit finds him, and pulls him into his boat. Jack takes him home to Mrs. Buggit, who has much experience caring for near-drowned men, and tells Quoyle he would have died had he not had so much fat to keep his body insulated. Mrs. Buggit is reminded of the terrible storm that took her son, Jesson.

Chapter 27: Newsroom

Billy Pretty comes into the newsroom and tells everyone that the floating man in the yellow suit was found to be headless, and is believed to be Bayonnet Melville's decapitated body. Nutbeem gives a monologue of the week's sexual abuse stories; he also says he is planning to leave Newfoundland soon. Quoyle has given Tert Card an article about a man who caught exactly nine cod this season, and just as he was about to sell his boat, the vessel sunk, loaded with empty nets. Nutbeem and Quoyle go out to lunch, and Nutbeem comments that Jack Buggit has a tormenting way about giving assignments.

Quoyle and Wavey are spending more and more time together. She makes little wooden trinkets to sell in gift shops down the coast. Although she is plain, her whole house is filled with colors.

Analysis

The excerpt from The Ashley Book of Knots that introduces Chapter 25 is a metaphor for the conflict between Tert Card and Quoyle and the theme of social change in the novel as a whole. The excerpt explains how to hang a picture on a wall if an outside force keeps tilting them askew. The introduction is referenced directly in the chapter when Tert Card's picture of the oil tanker falls askew. This detail seems to symbolize Tert Card's ultimate defeat in the newsroom quarrel—he is scolded for rewriting Quoyle's opinionated column on the oil spill, and Quoyle is reassured that in the future, his column will run just how he writes it. The tilted photograph seems to symbolize Tert Card's tenuous hold on his authority at The Gammy Bird. On a broader level, the chapter introduction helps develop the theme of social change in the novel. Like the picture that is tilted as a result of outside forces, Newfoundland is undergoing massive socioeconomic changes due to the power and whim of the outside world. The old way of life is in essence being knocked askew.