"The Boat" by Alistair MacLeod Assignment - KristaM and CassieS

1.   Lobb plot graph and key events of the story handed in separately.


2. a)      The narrator loves and favours his father, but he doesn't idealize him or his way of life.  The father is described to be disorderly, unkept, distant from his family and others, and sometimes turns out to have a temper with his wife.  Throughout the story the father seemed to be torn between the sea, books, and education.   He lived a life doing a job he disliked and never had the chance or oppurtunity to get a better education, make a better person of himself.  The narrator loved the sea and felt he should carry out the family business but at the end of the story, when his father dies, he decides to take his fathers advise and continue to strive for a better education.  In the future he finds himself, reading books, smoking cigarettes, and not completely happy with his job of being a university professor, similar to what his father was like.  The central character is the father, a fisherman who has never really liked the dangerous fishing lifestyle and who clearly would've preferred to get an education.   The central conflict is his mother doesn't share the same feeling about education and escaping from the fishing world that the father does.  She clearly doesn't want her family meeting the outside world, (not a life of the sea) and the narrator wants to study, but realizes that he loves the sea as well. 

3. a)      At first, the boat symbolizes how the father is imprisoned by his line of work because he never had the chance to get out and get a better education, do what he actually wanted to do in life, and to escape from the boat, he reads books.  The symbolism of the boat is transformed to symbolize a whole new meaning at the end of the story, a deeper meaning.  The father lived more of a life that his wife wanted rather than what he wanted.  The boat symbolizes you should always do what you want to do, what will make you happy and smile.  Don't do something you don't want to do because somebody else wants you to do it.  Always love yourself before you can love somebody else.  You don't want to live a life where you feel like your imprisoned, miserable.  

3.    In the beginning of The Boat the narrator is portrayed as a sea lover and it is very important to his life style. All this changes in the story when the narrator learns there is more to life then just the sea. He learns this from his father in the way that he used books to escape from the reality of his life. The father makes several comment in the story that indicate that he should pursue his education to ensure he doesn’t make the same mistakes. The end of the story leaves the narrator in a depression state. The mother lives alone and it sais she sends love towards the sea but bitterness upon her family. The father ends up dead beaten and destroyed by the very thing that controlled his life. The narrator grew up to be a professor and followed his education like his dad wanted but it doesn’t seem like he is happy or like it was even what he wanted. He grows up to be a mirror image of his father when the lesson he should have been teaching was to follow your dreams.

4.   POWERFUL SENSES OF THE STORY

SIGHT-eyes

On page 270, the author made one really descriptive paragraph.  The narrator was describing a photo and by how descriptive it was, it gives us a powerful sense of sight.  After the father and tourists got together at their rented cabins, the father received a photo oh himself that day.  On the back of the picture it said, “To Our Ernest Hemingway,” who is an old writer.  That gives us a sense of what the father may have looked like.  If you read deeper into the paragraph, it describes what the photo looked like, so basically describing the father and the setting of where that picture was taken.  The narrator’s father looked ‘massive’, as he was sitting in a lawn chair with bulky fisherman clothes that were way to big.  He was shadowed by a beach umbrella that was protecting his sunburned face.  The father had cracked lips, flecks of blood on his teeth, wore brass bracelets on his wrists and a large leather belt, a shirt that would show his white chest hair, big blue eyes and white hair down to his shoulders.  Also, on page 274, the narrator does a great job describing more of his father, for us to get another powerful sense of sight.  His father has a reddish complection so he never tans, irritated skin from the salt water, cracked lips that bleed when he smiles, and oozing salt-water boils.
FEEL-hands
          On page 276, there's a very descriptive paragraph where it gives the reader a sense of how could it would feel there.  Reading it, put shivers down our spines.  It describes how the grey relentless waves of the Atlantic are very high and it's so cold it seems like they wouldn't have been able to see the surface of the water, due to the squalls of snow and storms.  From this you also get a sense of hearing.  Reading the words "howling winds",  gives the reader a sense of how it may sound.
SMELL-nose
            On page 262, we get a sense of how the father's boat or maybe even the whole setting of the story may smell.  It smelled of salt and fish and always had the same smell due to them living in Nova Scotia and near the sea.

5.   Mother Character Sketch

The first mention of the mother is the story the boat is about her strong beliefs in order and cleanliness. This is shown when the narrator talks about how spotless she kept the house. It is also shown later in the story when the narrator describes how messy his father’s room was and how his mother refused to sleep there for she despised disorder in rooms and lives. The narrator also tells about how his mother loved the sea. You get the sense that the mother is very ignorant about any other lifestyle. This is shown when her daughters marry men who know nothing about the lifestyle at all and therefore she saw them as lazy, effeminate, dishonest and the unknown. From her making this conclusion I get the sense she is very traditional and unopen minded to any other tradition. You again know this when the narrator explains his mothers dislike for books and how see thinks they are a colossal waist of time and there is important work that should be done. In the end of the story when the father dyes and her daughters have all left to live their own lives as well as her son she is left with bitterness. In the story the boat the narrators mother is portrayed as selfish, controlling, stubborn, ignorant and very traditional. She also seems to have a great fear of change.

checked by: Mom