Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews April 6, 2023 March 30, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
Proulx writes this novel at a time when the northern cod supply has reached an all time low. Generations of men who have made their living from the sea are grappling for a sense of purpose. As oil becomes a more desired commodity, international companies move in on the Newfoundland way of life. Technological changes have replaced the local, small, seasonal fishing with mass, year-round operations. Billy Pretty's sadness over depleting natural resources is a nostalgia not only for a place that will never return to its former state, but a way of life that is lost. Along with the cod and seabirds stuck in the oil spills, the Billy Pretty, Alvin Yark, and Jack Buggit types are also becoming obliterated in favor of the machinery of mass production. This change also marks a dying out of the "how-to" genre. With the onslaught of mass production, there is no need for an individual to possess a diverse skill set—how to make a boat, plant a garden, prepare for the storm, navigate through the rocky shoreline, catch cod, herring or lobster.
This theme goes along with the theme of social and economic change. The narrative, in the same tradition as Willa Cather or Sarah Orne Jewett, seeks a story out of a specific geographic place instead of a story told with a place as backdrop. The conflict and tension in the story stem from the local way of life, the local personalities, the very entities that make this place different from any other. Billy Pretty is a good character to consider in the context of regionalism because he embodies the old way of life. When Tert Card introduces him to Quoyle for the first time, the narrator notes that Billy resembles a "landmark." He is the source on local lore and oral history. He knows the rocks along the shore to the point that the narrator calls his navigating "poetic." Indeed, Billy Pretty dramatizes the way regional skill intersects with aestheticism: like the writer of regional literature, he has the sense of the artistic value in marking and remembering geographic place and time. He knows the names of the rocks, why they are named such, and he returns to repaint his father's grave. When he thinks Jack is dead, he immediately imagines his skin markings like punctuation and metaphorically writes on the body of this old local stalwart. He is more of an artist than Jack Buggit or other true locals with his rhyming couplets that remind him how to navigate, and his commitment to the "lifestyle" section of the newspaper.
Again, the fragility of regionalism shows in the imminent social and technological changes. Without a need for skills of daily living (represented by the "how-to" / operating manual genre), there is no preservation of the aesthetic value that goes along with the skill. Quoyle's column about the painting is a good example of this. The eight schooners in the painting are beautiful partly because they require skill and hard work to sail. When they are replaced by oil rigs, both the occupational skills and the beauty are lost simultaneously.
Throughout the novel, Quoyle continues to grapple with his place in a family of loony murderers and cruel abusers. Quoyle's quest is to separate himself from the pain exerted upon him by his family, and then, to avoid turning into the painful perpetrator that his family was inclined to produce; he both must recover from his own wounds, and then, perhaps more heroically, break the chain of abuse. By including three generations of Quoyles (the aunt, Guy, Quoyle, Bunny and Sunshine) in the cast of characters, Proulx can dramatize the effects of the older generations on the next, and the potential for a change in terms of what the younger generation becomes. The journey back to Newfoundland is superficially a way of starting in a new place anew, and yet, it actually catalyzes the process of looking deep into his familial roots in order that Quoyle may face them, and ultimately, heal.
Hardly a chapter goes by without another character telling a new tall tale to add to the record of Newfoundland experience. This geographic area is well-stocked with storytellers. The proximity with the physical world creates a subculture that is less encumbered by the accoutrements of modern life in the United States. In this simpler life, story telling seems to take the place of mass media or video entertainment.
The reader is never quite sure which details are factual and which exaggerated, but that is really beside the point: what is important is the way in which these tales form a collective consciousness of a people and place. Like Beety's literal performance at the Christmas pageant, these stories are daily spoken performances that act out the bounds of cultural norms—what is appropriate, expected, right, wrong, funny, or feared. As is true with any anthropological study, these stories mark the values of a peculiar subculture. In a book such as The Shipping News that takes place in an obscure setting, the author is obligated to provide substantial evidence in order to build a case for a kind of lifestyle. Most readers will most likely not have traveled to Newfoundland, and therefore will have no context in which to understand the story without these stage-setting devices.
Please wait while we process your payment