The Boat by Alistair McLeod
1. Consider the title choice? What does a boat symbolize in life? In literature?
2. Look at the first couple paragraphs – here we can begin to identify tone and mood?
- Loss of sleep
- Terrible fear, darkened stairs, stomping, impatiently, frozen, fumbling, foolishly, alone, restlessly
- Grey corpses on the overflowing ashtray (metaphor for cigarettes)
- Extinction of spark
- Bitter coffee
3. Look for shifts – could be use of language, sentence structure, shift of time and place
- Notice a shift to memory of father seems lighter, slower, less intense
C. Look at how other characters are introduced
- Author creates unity by paralleling mom’s character with how the men ran their boats – delineation between a man’s sphere of influence and a women’s sphere of influence
- Look at words associated with mother: tall, dark, powerful, miraculous, magnificent, younger, beauty, of the sea, despises disorder, considered reading a colossal waste of time
- Look at words associated with father – rumpled, unmade, archaic, black scars and gashes, neglected cigarettes, battered bureau, strangled by shirts
- How setting reveals father’s character
- Varied books and magazines, "room remained like a rock of opposition in the sparkling waters of a clear deep harbor"